Protonmail, an email service that is proud of security with end-to-end encryption, faces criticism after it resigned to the IP address of French climate activist to Swiss police. As TechCrunch informs, the company was acting on a request sent through Europol by the French authorities, who were looking for help from Swiss. Since it is based on Switzerland, Protonmail has to obey the laws of the country. Which includes the felling of IP addresses of users in “extreme criminal cases”, according to its own transparency report.

Andy Yen, CEO of Proton, said in a blog publication today in which the company has tried to make it clear that the local laws must follow. “In this case, Proton received a legally binding order of the Swiss authorities in which we are obliged to fulfill,” he wrote. “There was no possibility of appealing this particular request.”

The case in question involves activists who assumed commercial locations and apartments near Paris’s Place Sainte Marthe. According to TechCrunch, the protest began as a local effort around gentrification in the neighborhood, but quickly became a movement that engaged national headlines in France. On September 1, they published an article that affirms that the French authorities sent a message through Europol to discover who created his Protonmail account.

Yen notes that the encryption of the company prevents you from seeing the contents of a Protonmail account, and does not know the identity of its users either. Then, in this case, he did not know that he was revealing information about climate activists. Advancing, he says that the company will have clearer how it handles cases of criminal proceedings, and will further promote the use of ProtonMail through its TOR site and the company’s VPN for users, especially concerned about privacy.

In 2020, Proton said that he received 3,572 orders for user information, he played 750 orders and finally met 3,017 requests.