Proton Mail is potentially facing a block in India

Proton, a software company based in Switzerland that emphasises privacy protection, announced receiving a notification regarding the possibility of its email service, Proton Mail, being blocked in India. This move follows incidents in which the service was used to send hoax bomb threats to multiple schools in the southern Indian state, Tamil Nadu.

A spokesperson for Proton expressed the company’s objections to the potential block in a statement to the Hindustan Times, an Indian daily newspaper. They criticized the block as a misguided strategy, arguing that it would only end up causing harm to everyday citizens. According to the spokesperson, blocking Proton would be ineffective as a response to the threats; cybercriminals could merely switch to another email service to send threats, rendering the block ineffective especially if the wrongdoers were based outside India.

Four days earlier, the Hindustan Times had reported that the Indian IT Ministry had issued a directive instructing local internet service providers to block Proton Mail, as per the request of the Tamil Nadu police. The police had reported receiving bomb threat hoaxes at at least 13 private schools in Chennai.

D Ashok Kumar, who serves as a senior officer in the Tamil Nadu police cybercrime wing, spoke to Moneycontrol explaining that he had personally issued the request for the IT Ministry to block Proton Mail. Kumar, who also acts as the state’s nodal officer for such blocking orders, lamented that Proton Mail had been the least cooperative in sharing details regarding the suspects who had disseminated the bomb threats.

Kumar expounded that they couldn’t retrieve the IP address, the mobile number or any other information related to the email because Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted, thus severely hindering their capacity to trace the culprits.

Officials at Proton Mail and the IT Ministry declined to comment on the issue on Thursday.

News of the potential block provoked concern among numerous lawmakers alongside privacy advocacy groups in India. Saket Gokhale, a member of the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament, commented, “Sources and whistleblowers often communicate with reporters using Proton Mail to avoid their identity being disclosed. Privacy is being demolished brick by brick.”

The block, if implemented, would represent the second serious setback for Proton. In 2022, the Switzerland-based firm had to dismantle its Proton VPN servers in India following the introduction of a domestic regulation which mandated operators of virtual private networks to disclose their customers’ information to authorities in New Delhi.