ProtonMail did not escape the Big Brother!

ProtonMail is the most recent addition to the family of secure communication solutions (there are a few others that I will cover in separate blog posts). According to their web site ProtonMail is fully anonymous and confidential web E-mail system, i.e. Yahoo Mail or GMail but better: they don't have access to your E-mails and don't keep track of users, accessing the service. What can be better! No wonder the ProtonMail Indie Go Go campaign managed to attract remarkable 300K in a month or less since the launch of the campaign. The news broke a few days ago that the ProtonMail campaign ran into issues with PayPal, who handles some of the payments, contributed through IndieGoGo. Paypal froze ProtonMail account and refuses to release accumulated funds. At the same time, contributions made through BitCoin remain safe and fully accessible to ProtonMail. The news highlights an important fact largely overlooked by broad public and, specifically, enthused ProtonMail campaign contributors: no system, solution or tool is secure, safe or anonymous unless it is fully distributed and peer-to-peer. Moreover, the weakest chain defines the security of the overall system. In case of the ProtonMail the reliance on PayPal that is subject to regulation and legislative pressure is is the Achilles' heel that will drag down ProtonMail if not eliminated ASAP! True confidentiality and anonymity are impossible as long as there is slightest dependency on centralized, governed solutions or infrastructure.