this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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For one thing the US sent them a list of accounts and they suspended them with no process or appeal just last year. For another Someone who isn't me signed up for an account and had it immediately suspended for suspicious activity, after a sleuth it was found their IP was on some shady blacklist, despite them not using that IP for anything but social media scrolling and news.
Suspicion is Israel is behind it. Anyway, proton gives no way to appeal like the other one does. I think there was another incident of proton suspending accounts for the US too.
One of the unfortunate realities of operating a sensitive service like email is that you have to cooperate with valid government requests or risk getting fined, or worse, banned from the country. The good thing is that end to end encryption restricts the information they have to turnover about your messages, but this is vulnerability of pretty much any service. Your email provider will not go to jail for you.
I do find the IP blacklisting a little ironic considering they run a VPN, but that’s not much of a surprise either considering their freemium business model. I don’t see how either of these practices would link them to Israel, but it’s fair if you’re uncomfortable with them. I think you’d be hard pressed to find services that don’t also do these things, though. What do you use for email?
The IP blacklist is separate, there are a few dozen firms that compile blacklists, you can run your ip online to check quite easily. This suspicion is the US/Israel is putting persistent critics of Israel that have gotten traction, on these blacklists. If one was born yesterday in a cave that would seem paranoid, but to anyone paying attention it's really not.
The fact of the matter is, the other privacy focused free email has appeals for these things, while proton just suspends your account based on the word of the most dishonest pieces of shit on the planet.