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Encrypted Email Service ProtonMail is Being Blocked in Turkey (protonmail.com)

Posted by msmash on from the my-way-or-highway dept.

ProtonMail: We have confirmed that Internet service providers in Turkey have been blocking ProtonMail this week. Our support team first became aware of connectivity problems for Turkish ProtonMail users starting on Tuesday. After further investigation, we determined that protonmail.com was unreachable for both Vodafone Turkey mobile and fixed line users. Since then, we have also received some sporadic reports from users of other Turkish ISPs. At one point, the issue was prevalent in every single major city in Turkey. After investigating the issue along with members of the ProtonMail community in Turkey, we have confirmed this is a government-ordered block rather than a technical glitch. Internet censorship in Turkey tends to be fluid so the situation is constantly evolving. Sometimes ProtonMail is accessible, and sometimes it is unreachable. For the first time ever though, we have confirmed that ProtonMail was subject to a block, and could face further issues in the future. In the post, ProtonMail has also outlined ways to bypass the block.

35 comments

  1. whatever non news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what do you expect from a Islamic dictatorship.

    1. Re:whatever non news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      IIRC the last time they did this it was at the DNS level. There was all kinds of photos with graffiti spray painted on buildings explaining how to change your servers to 8.8.8.8

    2. Re:whatever non news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correction: this is the Great Man politics of the East. We used to have that also here in the West, and some people even want to return to the days of Great Man politics, without remembering what cost it had.

    3. Re: whatever non news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      There's Erdogan, Putin, Assad, Duterte and now Xi, all members of the International Tyrants Club. Trump is a wannabe member but the others all laugh at him behind his back.

  2. It's fine with me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I post my plans for a coup in plain text. First Slashdot, then Turkey, then the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and finally Bea's House of Pancakes.

  3. outlined ways to bypass the block. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Now THIS is the way to handle (and report on) the problem! I hope ProtonMail is a sincere fighter for the cause. A concerted, united effort by everybody else will help to make censorship a thing of the past. Still have to free ourselves of the ISP ball and chain (and the tyranny of the conservative majority) to make it really work.

  4. Censorship means by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That you acknowledge the Armenian genocide, Kurdistan and that pork is delicious. Wikipedia still blocked as well.

  5. Oddly ... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... ElectronMail and NeutronMail are still allowed. They're now charging for a new service called IonMail.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Oddly ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nice. I got a charge out of your joke.

  6. Shame on Vodafone by amorsen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is a disgrace that private companies from Western countries make money on human rights abuses.

    Humanity will never forget what IBM did in WW2. IBM got away with it, but their name will forever be shamed. Vodafone, do you really want the same fate?

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    1. Re:Shame on Vodafone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is a disgrace that private companies from Western countries make money on human rights abuses.

      Humanity will never forget what IBM did in WW2. IBM got away with it, but their name will forever be shamed. Vodafone, do you really want the same fate?

      IBM has been shamed to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Yeah, that sure showed them...

    2. Re:Shame on Vodafone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh please. Ask any millenial what he thinks about what IBM did in WW2, and all you'll get is the deer-in-headlights blank stare.

      The generation that never knew war will be the one starting the next one, The generation that never knew the horrors of polio and smallpox are today's anti-vaxers. The generation that never knew tyrany are the ones freely and democratically voting for monsters like Erdogan.

      People forget. The errors of the past are documented ad-nauseam in multiple films, photos, plays, philosophical and historical texts, going back centuries. And yet people learn nothing from them. Each new generation repeats the mistakes of its predecessors again and again and again.

      A species capable of recording its culture and history more than any other species on earth, and yet incapable of not continuously repeating the same mistakes from one generation to the next is a textbook example of an evolutionary dead-end.

    3. Re:Shame on Vodafone by amorsen · · Score: 1

      A species capable of recording its culture and history more than any other species on earth, and yet incapable of not continuously repeating the same mistakes from one generation to the next is a textbook example of an evolutionary dead-end.

      I would like to see that textbook.

      Also, a lot of what IBM did in WW2 was only made public knowledge this century. Millenials have every chance of being educated on the issue.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    4. Re:Shame on Vodafone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It is a disgrace that private companies from Western countries make money on human rights abuses.

      Humanity will never forget what IBM did in WW2. IBM got away with it, but their name will forever be shamed. Vodafone, do you really want the same fate?

      Why was IBM allowed to export equipment to Germany? It’s not like export controls are a recent invention. There were Nazi groups in the US, in the wide open at one point. You’re compressing a whole lot of history into that rear view mirror of yours, just bear that in mind. The German company that made small arms to heavy artillery, even Big Bertha, they maintain our elevators now. So yah... humanity forgets, but I’m not sure what we’d gain by remembering everything. 100 year old grudges? 1000? 2, 3, 5000 year old ones? For what?

  7. When will be blocked in Spain also? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I give it a month.

  8. protonmail.com is actually protonmail.ch by Jerry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    $ ping protonmail.com
    PING protonmail.com (185.70.40.182) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 185-70-40-182.protonmail.ch (185.70.40.182): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=138 ms
    served on a GoDaddy server

    ~$ whois protonmail.com
          Domain Name: PROTONMAIL.COM
          Registry Domain ID: 1612103273_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
          Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
          Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com/
          Updated Date: 2016-08-10T23:37:51Z
          Creation Date: 2010-08-21T09:10:58Z
          Registry Expiry Date: 2019-08-21T09:10:58Z
          Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
          Registrar IANA ID: 146
          Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@godaddy.com ...
          Name Server: NS1.PROTONMAIL.CH
          Name Server: NS2.PROTONMAIL.CH

    ~$ ping protonmail.ch
    PING protonmail.ch (185.70.40.181) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 185-70-40-181.protonmail.ch (185.70.40.181): icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=125 ms

    So, protonmail.com is at 185.70.40.182 and protonmail.ch is at 185.70.40.181

    Interestingly, when I attempt to "whois" protonmail.ch I get:
    ~$ whois protonmail.ch
    "The number of requests per client per time interval is restricted. You have exceeded this limit. Please wait a moment and try again."
    I can whois any other site repeatedly without problems of a "per client per time" limit. Whois is being less than open about its results.

    In /etc/hosts place
    185.70.40.182 protonmail.com
    185.70.40.181 protonmail.ch

    and bypass DNS blocking.

    --

    Running with Linux for over 20 years!

  9. PGP? Regular E-mail? Usenet? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

    Everything is an encrypted communication service if you know what you're doing.

    1. Re:PGP? Regular E-mail? Usenet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bnh +1 hjkhkjhio iioi90hyjkhoi9yghk

    2. Re:PGP? Regular E-mail? Usenet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everything is a decrypted communication service if you know what you're doing.

    3. Re:PGP? Regular E-mail? Usenet? by Sloppy · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, it looks like this one is for people who either don't know what they're doing, or for people who can't be bothered. It appears to be Yet Another one of those encrypt in the web browser webmail services, where the user is always hoping that they're getting the same, trustworthy client-side script from the server each time, never modified to leak keys. i.e. it's as vulnerable to attack as Lavabit was.

      Anyone wanna set me straight on this? Because it looks like it's just another scam -- well, ok, perhaps well-meaning, so let's call it a folly, not a scam. Except in 2018 I don't think being that dumb is realistic, so I think I'll go back to the word "scam."

      --
      As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
    4. Re:PGP? Regular E-mail? Usenet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      protonmail is actually a well done, and good service. no adds, becuase i pay for it. yea, it uses GPG keys but it also not only encyrpts
      the traffic, and offers mail-to-mail encryption it also encrypts the entire mailbox on disk.

      not scam, its first rate and has legal protections of Switzerland. (yea i use it, and pay as a sunscriber)

      while i can use a mail client, with GPG its just not worth it since i do so much on my phone.

    5. Re:PGP? Regular E-mail? Usenet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > has legal protections of Switzerland

      What legal protections of Switzerland?
      They voted last year for full-blown surveillance of all traffic coming in and out of the country, secret searches of homes without court order, mandated 12 months metadata storage and a bunch of other asinine 'Daddy, please protect me from the non-existing terrorists' measures.

      Couple that with Switzerland's NDB being a 'valued partner' of the NSA and the general bending over of the government to any requests coming from other countries, the EU, and especially the US, and you got *very little* of any kind of 'legal protections'!

  10. ProtonMail is a sham by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can't guarantee secure encrypted email for the web. The only thing a bad actor needs to do is get a certificate signed by a CA (Let's not fool ourselves into thinking this is difficult for state actors), and put some JS into response that dumps out the decrypted content. Let's not do ourselves a disservice by even discussing this service and acting like it's any more secure than yahoo email. Encryption needs to take place before it hits the web browser.

    1. Re: ProtonMail is a sham by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AFAIK if you use it locally with say Thunderbird it sets up a local SMTP server that Thunderbird uses which does all the encryption client side before relaying to their servers. Obviously if they got compromised someone could make the SMTP server send the unencrypted message instead though.

      A friend announced he was going to start using protonmail and end-to-end encryption everywhere recently, I laughed at his paranoia. I'll stick with Gmail, I don't care they read my mail I'm not interesting enough for them to care about me.

  11. The usual by DCFusor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Corrupt and evil leader trying to hang onto power by suppressing all dissent. Because even Erdogan knows he is evil and what he would do if he were subject to such a nasty leader himself. It's all about what a shrink would call "projection". Never ends well, whether it's this guy, or say, Nancy Pelosi not wanting me to have a gun because she does evil things with B52's and boots on the ground....

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
    1. Re:The usual by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I understand your first sentence. After that ... huh?

    2. Re:The usual by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My condolences for your smallness. May your compensation ever be in your favor.

  12. Re:protonmail.com is actually protonmail.ch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have not used whois in several months:

    ~ $ whois protonmail.ch

    The number of requests per client per time interval is
    restricted. You have exceeded this limit.
    Please wait a moment and try again.

  13. "hosts" file on Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You want to edit:

    C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

    You'll need to start the text editor elevated (ie. "Run as Administrator")

  14. DNS server IPs changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whois on protomail.ch now states:

    ns1.protonmail.ch [37.35.106.40]
    ns2.protonmail.ch [185.70.40.19]