The explanation was, at its core, quite simple. In an extensive post, Andy Yen, founder and chief executive of ProtonMail, explained what happened and noted that it’s deeply concerned about this case and deplores that the legal tools for serious crimes are being used in this way. TechCrunch reported today that despite ProntonMail having a policy of not logging IP addresses, an IP address from a ProtonMail user ended up in the hands of French police and led to the arrest of a climate activist. The issue here is that part of ProtonMail’s privacy pledge is that it does not log IP addresses.

The service offers end-to-end encryption coupled with “Swiss privacy,” as strict Swiss privacy laws also protect the service. ProtonMail, founded in 2014, is one of the leading privacy-focused email services online and promotes itself as providing secure email communication. Swiss secure email provider Proton Technologies AG has been forced to defend itself after providing an internet address of a French climate activist to authorities despite having a no-IP address logging policy.

Protonmail secure email