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Comment by flotzam | Hacker News Reader

And still no way to anonymously create an account (free or paid): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28435153

Make of that what you will, after so many years and the nth redesign

Privacy != Anonymity.

I can see why they do what they do, it probably prevents a lot of spam accounts and abusive use type accounts from being created. But privacy doesn't mean anonymous. If you want anonymous I don't think Proton is for you.

I guess I don't know what sort of abuse they experience, but for spam I'd think $10 / month would be more than sufficient.

What if that $10/mo is going to result in a charge back from the stolen credit card? That, on top of spam and whatever other abuse is going on with that account.

OK, then only accept crypto for anonymous accounts.

And it would be easy for Proton, because they already accept cryptocurrency for subsequent payments after account creation, but not for the first payment during account creation (catch 22)

In the end it's their choice to continue collecting personal data, even after Swiss authorities compelled them to disclose personal data to French authorities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProtonMail#Compliance_with_Swi...

Honestly, cryptocurrencies (I hate that these have hijacked "crypto" for their silly garbage, to me crypto will always be cryptography. Old man yells at cloud I guess..) just invite abuse. As a service provider I'd never offer cryptocurrency as payment if that service could be abused in one way or another. Just my experience, to each their own.

I don't like it either (to put it mildly) but Mullvad allows cash to be send to them, no questions asked. You can even pay for various months that way.

Proton also supports cash for renewals/upgrades, but they went out of their way to remove the cryptocurrency option and the cash option during signup...

Robust privacy (you choose what to disclose to whom) often presents as anonymity to third parties

And Proton is marketing themselves as anonymity friendly: https://proton.me/news/climate-activist-arrest

Exactly. The reason I pay for proton mail is not so that proton mail doesn’t know I’m a customer. It’s because proton mail doesn't read my emails. Gmail/Google does. That’s what privacy is important to me as an email user.

Sometimes it feels like people scream security === anonymity === privacy and really don’t understand what they’re even yelling about.

Yet if use android Proton is stick to google push service till today, even when IMAP itself actually has push function since IMAP4.

Anonymity can be a big part of privacy, which is fairly obvious and for some people it's inside that privacy circle as a necessary component.

Between 2019 and 2020, I've created a few free one-time ProtonMail accounts, which I used for creating throw-away Apple IDs.

In fact, I just created one to verify. It's still possible. See for yourself:

user: testaccount.forhackernews@protonmail.com

pass: testdonotuseforseriousstuff

All I had to do was to solve a captcha with bicycles in order to prove I was human. And the dialog for recovery e-mail / phone had a "Maybe later" button.

I live in Switzerland, maybe the impossibility of anonymous account creation is a legal issue in some countries ?

Did you use Tor Browser though? They've been blocking that during signup for a long time now

No, I didn't. And I just tried with Tor Browser, but the captcha option is not available.

it is. i just created an account on there onion site using only captcha

No phone number, secondary email, or credit card info was required?

"only using captcha" so no

I just tried to register an account using the onion site. It requires JavaScript, as well as either an email or phone number for SMS. I saw no captcha when attempting to create the account.

Edit: https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7...

"If you are only given the option of email or SMS verification and would like to avoid using email or SMS verification, it is possible to do so by upgrading to a paid plan using PayPal or Bitcoin."

Yeah, I would hardly call any of those options anonymous. Pseudonymous at best.

Which .onion? The signup link on https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7... redirects to their clearnet site. Maybe it redirected you too and you landed on that one mythical Tor exit node not yet blocked by Proton, which is always rumored to exist (but I've never seen it)

As of a month or two ago, it does not redirect to the cleartext site and stays on .onion.

Right now it's staying on .onion again (and blocking anon signups), but at the time of wangler1949's comment it redirected to proton.me when I checked.

I have used a burner phone and anonymously obtained btc wallet with them.

btc isn't really anonymous, although it's -easily- traced it can be with a bit of resources.

That's why i said obtained not transacted

Just buy a burner and use that for your phone number during setup.

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