Proton Meet Isn't What They Told You It Was
by bundie on 4/3/2026, 8:59:45 AM
https://www.sambent.com/proton-meet-isnt-what-they-told-you/
Comments
by: class3shock
The articles format is awful and designed to wast your time.<p>This article also just points out the use of Livekit but doesn't deliver what that means for your security. Maybe instead of writing a hit piece you could have dug deeper, talked to Proton?<p>I've seen alot of articles and posters here being negative on Proton, calling it "shady", regurgitating facts that are supposed to be gotchas but have tons of nuance if you dig and am beginning to think there is some coordinated effort to get people not to use it.
4/3/2026, 11:10:45 AM
by: arcza
What a truly unreadable website. As another commenter said I see a few of these get churned out with the same annoying dark patterns.
4/3/2026, 10:28:46 AM
by: rvnx
Most of the privacy claims (of all type of apps) are essentially garbage anyway because realistically, if a website or an app can be compelled to push an update to a specific user, then they can intercept anything they want.<p>It doesn't even have to be a specific binary, it can be "just turn on this A/B testing / debug flag for that user" or a piece of javascript
4/3/2026, 9:36:33 AM
by: palata
Hmm, I am not completely sure what the website is trying to say (there is soooo much text and it's quite unreadable). But it feels like it says "it is hosted on US servers, so it's baaaaad".<p>The thing is, it seems to be end-to-end encrypted with MLS, which means that the servers cannot decrypt the conversations. Probably <i>some</i> metadata are leaking (which IP is in a call with which other IP), but that's a different threat model. Metadata is always a harder problem.<p>Now I don't know if Proton knows <i>which users</i> are together in a call, or if it's just leaking IPs. Maybe the article says it, but I didn't have time to decrypt it :-).
4/3/2026, 11:14:37 AM
by: beevelop
Especially questionable choice by Proton not to opt for the self-hosted option. LiveKit offers an enterprise tier that even lets you set up your own mesh, so you are not dependent on their hosted infra.
4/3/2026, 9:58:36 AM
by: irusensei
I'm sorry I had to use a feature on my browser I rarely use which is summarize. I'm pretty sure your point is valid and concerning but the way that page was designed is just too painful to read.
4/3/2026, 9:48:26 AM
by: pogue
After Proton has repeatedly turned over users of their email account to law enforcement, always with many excuses, their claims about no ability for any government to see what's going on on their network ran <i>very</i> hollow.<p>I know Brave has offered their talk video conferencing service for awhile, but I don't know if any serious network analysis has been performed on it. <a href="https://talk.brave.com/" rel="nofollow">https://talk.brave.com/</a><p>For document collaboration, I'm not aware of much else that's private/encrypted (etc) however. <a href="https://www.privacyguides.org/en/document-collaboration/" rel="nofollow">https://www.privacyguides.org/en/document-collaboration/</a>
4/3/2026, 9:43:45 AM
by: davzie
Interesting how so much negative sentiment creeps out when there's a true European competitor to the big US tech companies.
4/3/2026, 10:43:25 AM
by: holtwick
For small groups SFU like Livekit is not needed at all. Still E2E and realtime collab. I wrote such a thing: <a href="https://brie.fi/ng" rel="nofollow">https://brie.fi/ng</a>
4/3/2026, 11:16:48 AM
by: zero0529
Question is will the government learn anything meaningful if they subpoena the LiveKit providers? (Including and excluding HNDL)
4/3/2026, 9:52:39 AM
by: a-rbsn
easiest way to private video calls is just to self-host Jitsi Meet anyway
4/3/2026, 9:42:17 AM
by: PedroBatista
Please remind me: Is there any legitimate business venture that can operate outside the laws of the country they are registered?<p>If there is, why don’t these people who write blog posts and comments about how “this is all a scam!!” “It’s a psyop! “They” control it all!” If it’s all black and white, if there no real difference between a company like Proton and Google or Microsoft, then why don’t they create a business that provides a service where there’s no way to any government know anything at all, ever? They’ll be printing money..<p>But perhaps the conspiracy realm and public broadcast of ideals is more attractive than a real business.<p>Yes, you shouldn’t trust 100% in a person let alone a group of people that form a company. Grow up.
4/3/2026, 11:29:35 AM
by: red_admiral
Is this the web version design of the "moon landings were a hoax" conspiracy poster?
4/3/2026, 9:57:50 AM
by: IceDane
This is the worst form of Article I've ever seen. Did the author read this? Is there even really an author or did Chatgpt just write all of it and generate the page?
4/3/2026, 10:29:11 AM
by:
4/3/2026, 11:13:57 AM
by: jrflowers
This is actually kind of hilarious. “<i>We</i> don’t <i>store</i> your data when you use our service. <i>You</i> hand it over <i>in real time</i> when you use it.”
4/3/2026, 9:56:57 AM
by: tamimio
Proton is the most shady company out there, especially with the fact that they try to make you put all your eggs into their basket. I stopped using their email (when they used to be an only email company) when they dropped the .ch domain. Same goes with botched security products like grapheneOS and the likes, when the hardware is backdoored, the modem is tracking you more than your psycho ex, yet you are given these illusion of security to buy.. you are not, in fact, you are gonna get more obvious for fingerprinting than using an average iPhone like most people and blend in. Honeypot, hornets nest, whatever the terminology but the concept being used and is still used to lure people in and make the job easier to ID them than going after them in the wild.
4/3/2026, 10:15:30 AM
by: ErroneousBosh
What a shitty website. I got to about the third slowly-fading-in-picture-of-text block and realised that whether or not I wanted to read it, it's more effort than it's worth.
4/3/2026, 9:41:07 AM
by: syl5x
The quiz at the end of the article is wild honestly.
4/3/2026, 9:54:08 AM
by: raverbashing
I just love people who go on their soapbox to complain about a newer alternative <i>when the status quo is worse</i><p>"nooo but proton mail complies to court orders!!111" wow shocking I know right? Do you think the other providers don't?<p>These are usually the same people who forget rubber-hose decrypting works<p>"But they use LiveKitCloud" yes - however we don't know half the story<p>Can Proton BYOK over their infra?<p>LiveKit's website TOS with a generic user - not ProtonMail. We don't know if there are any agreements there<p>> "all disputes are governed by the laws of the State of California"<p>Yes this is common with TOS.<p>> Their privacy policy explicitly acknowledges FTC jurisdiction and states the company will "access, preserve, and disclose your information"<p>This is the important part, not the other one above it<p>> showed active connections to 161.115.177.32 on port 443, a LiveKit-owned IP block (ARIN OrgId LIVEK) hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure<p>Good test, but what/where was the originating IP? Was it using Brave's VPN (to the US) by any chance?<p>TBH I'm still more annoyed about the 90 day cookie - that was just rude<p>So again "why don't we have better privacy respecting options?" Maybe because if we try to do it some "privacy advicates" will throw a massive fit complaining about all its shorcomings (and still not pay for the service)
4/3/2026, 10:07:12 AM
by: avazhi
Pretty funny because a few weeks ago some dude felt compelled to virtue signal about how he was moving off American-controlled services like Gmail, as some ostensible protest against Trump and the Iran War. I pointed out that Proton Mail, one of the services he moved to, is ultimately controlled by the US Gov, and my comment got flagged lol.<p>Proton being at the behest of Uncle Sam has been old news for a while.
4/3/2026, 9:58:29 AM