Proton spam and the AI consent problem

Posted by dbushell 1/23/2026

Proton spam and the AI consent problem(dbushell.com)

557 points | 428 commentspage 8

phacker007 1/23/2026|

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crazygringo 1/23/2026||

> Has anyone else noticed that the AI industry can’t take “no” for an answer? AI is being force-fed into every corner of tech.

And yet this blog post is guilty of the exact same thing. It's just a complaint about which marketing messages get categorized as which newsletters you can opt in or out of (a valid complaint but pretty boring), but slaps "AI Consent" in the title to turn it into clickbait because the marketing message happens to be about an AI product.

This spam has been a problem for decades. It didn't arise with AI. I haven't even noticed any uptick with AI.

0x1ch 1/23/2026||

About six months ago I switched to completely self hosted email in Hetzner, waited the billing period to receive outbound access, but still use free forwarding for outbound by default. People always complain on forums about the struggles of self hosting, but outside of an occasional email I have to whitelist because of spam filters, it's nearly hands free (mailcow).

I setup aliases for every single one of my existing protonmail and gmail accounts, and now have them forward to my aliases. I can still use my old accounts, but everything is now ran through my systems, my data that I control.

I recommend others look at doing the same.

bdbdbdb 1/23/2026|

I'm with proton on this tbh. It's not a lumo update, it's an attempt to tell people who don't use lumo about it's existence. Maybe it's not something you want to read but an email saying "hey, have you heard of this thing called lumo" is not something you'd send out to existing lumo users

fundatus 1/23/2026||

Over in the Proton subreddit we've been wondering if there is currently some kind of Anti-Proton campaign going on. Constantly people will loudly complain about completely benign things and get lot's of people agreeing with them.

unethical_ban 1/23/2026|||

I thought the same thing last night when this was first posted. Lots of "if they can't get this right do they even care about users" as if a slipped-up miscategorization of a marketing email is the same as an oil company leaking waste into a river.

I operate on the assumption they hold firm on their technical commitments of encrypted email, email obfuscation, decent VPN and a solid password manager.

Call them out on mistakes, sure, but this blog post was written like a manifesto for something so minor.

this_user 1/23/2026||||

Every time there is anything posted about Proton on HN, there is an immediate wave of super negative comments, none of which ever offer any arguments of substance. It's always just some vague allegations, and this has been the case for years. It's pretty obvious what is going on.

anonymous908213 1/23/2026||

These vapid fanboy-esque comments make me significantly more likely to believe that Proton is astroturfing than the inverse that you are implying, that some unspecified actor is engaging in a conspiracy to impugn Proton's reputation. That said, if criticising Proton is indeed a paid vocation and you have some concrete details about where I can get paid for my comments daring to doubt the uncompromising holiness of Proton, I'm all ears.

7bit 1/23/2026|||

Calling it an "anti- Proton campaign" or "benign" is just rhetorical hand waving. Those words let you dismiss criticism without engaging with the substance. Proton did deliberately email people who opted out. That is a GDPR violation, full stop. They are a large, well resourced company; "oops" is not an excuse. Criticism over that is not hysteria or bandwagoning, and blaming people for speaking up instead of the company for breaking the rules is weak.

fundatus 1/23/2026||

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7bit 1/23/2026||

You said all of that already and I replied. If you're not answering to any of my arguments, I'm not going to bother continuing the debate.

anonymous908213 1/23/2026||

> but an email saying "hey, have you heard of this thing called lumo" is not something you'd send out to existing lumo users

But it is an e-mail you send out to people who have specifically went out of their way to indicate to you they do not want you e-mailing them about Lumo?