Protonmail email was shut down under investigation?

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oatmeal

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So I know a lot of people on here use protonmail because it's very easy to create accounts there and many of them.
I myself have a hundred or so just to use for signing up at places that ask for email verification etc.

One of my protonmail emails however was shut down. I don't know when. I hadn't logged into it for probably 1-2 years.
I got a message when I tried to login and I couldn't get a screenshot of it as it disappears after 2 seconds but I read something
like, "the account is under investigation from Swiss law .... blah blah blah".

It seems like wherever I used that protonmail got reported by people and protonmail took it upon themselves to shut it down

Now I don't know if this message is common or if they are seriously doing some kind of investigation on my email account.
Just wondering if anyone else has ever had this happen to your protonmail email too?
 
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Protonmail is solid in my eyes as i use their paid plan myself.
There is not much which could lead to close a paid account other than swiss authority.
However since you used a free account "for spamming?" it might they got pissed and disabled it themself using their standard template.
 
oatmeal said:
So I know a lot of people on here use protonmail because it's very easy to create accounts there and many of them.
I myself have a hundred or so just to use for signing up at places that ask for email verification etc.

One of my protonmail emails however was shut down. I don't know when. I hadn't logged into it for probably 1-2 years.
I got a message when I tried to login and I couldn't get a screenshot of it as it disappears after 2 seconds but I read something
like, "the account is under investigation from Swiss law .... blah blah blah".

It seems like wherever I used that protonmail got reported by people and protonmail took it upon themselves to shut it down

Now I don't know if this message is common or if they are seriously doing some kind of investigation on my email account.
Just wondering if anyone else has ever had this happen to your protonmail email too?
Click to expand...
Hi, did protonmail ever get back to you on this. Did they unlock your account
 
Hello. I'm interested in learning more about this issue. I have a similar story to share - would you mind sending me PM to discuss? Thanks very much
 
Used them for a while never got any issues or problems like you and I don't log in much except sometimes.
 
They claim to be the most secure and safe email out there, maybe share a screenshot of what went wrong so people can understand what's really wrong with it.
 
miglywigly29 said:
This wouldn't be the case because they don't use this specific error message about an investigation for closing inactive accounts. Hopefully Oatmeal responds soon with more details!
Click to expand...
I don't want to ask or know why lol. I just stopped using it. My guess is that I was receiving suspicious emails to my account even though I never knew or checked my email for 1-2 years and whatever I was getting in there was flagged and they shut down the email. A good question if anyone knows is, can they see what is inside my email account? Even I don't know what was in there since I hadn't checked for so long but does software or actual human workers pry into everyone's emails to see what kind of activity is going on?

If they can't or don't look inside our emails, then I really wonder how it got shutdown? If they do look inside your emails before shutting the account down, then doesn't this pose a huge issue for privacy to everyone in the world who are having their personal emails spied on by gmail or whatever mail service provider you use?
 
oatmeal said:
I don't want to ask or know why lol. I just stopped using it. My guess is that I was receiving suspicious emails to my account even though I never knew or checked my email for 1-2 years and whatever I was getting in there was flagged and they shut down the email. A good question if anyone knows is, can they see what is inside my email account? Even I don't know what was in there since I hadn't checked for so long but does software or actual human workers pry into everyone's emails to see what kind of activity is going on?

If they can't or don't look inside our emails, then I really wonder how it got shutdown? If they do look inside your emails before shutting the account down, then doesn't this pose a huge issue for privacy to everyone in the world who are having their personal emails spied on by gmail or whatever mail service provider you use?
Click to expand...
People could have complained about the email being used for spam or associated with something shady, which is why they would shut it down without looking into the account.

The general rule is never trust a company to its word that it won't invade your privacy or be forced/coerced into building a backdoor that circumvents their promise to protect/encrypt your data.

I discovered a certain popular password security company that make a big show of how they're encrypting your data and if you lose your master password, they can't help you decrypt it - only to find out that most of the data is stored as plain-text in their database and the security key doesn't really do anything but provide people with a false sense of security.
 
bartosimpsonio said:
Obviously yes.
Click to expand...

Are you sure? Do you realize the implications if that is true (for everyone in this world)? I think you mean they can IF some kind of court order / injunction was given to them, then they can. But do you actually think email providers are reading your emails in plain site / daylight? I really doubt that.
 
I use protonmail all the time for my online purposes and love the idea of their encryption and I think they are being truthful about it, I mean like if you lose your password and reset them you won’t be able to see your previous emails anymore since resetting password means resetting the encryption key as well
 
After reading your post title, I thought that Protonmail service is shutdown & under investigation.
 
The name is really unfortunate, because many, as I understand it, have such an opinion.
 
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