10 ms·

Infomaniak comes out in support of controversial Swiss encryption law

188 points by BafS 1y ago

ignoramous 1y ago
The article: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/infomaniak-breaks-rank-and-comes-out-in-support-of-controversial-swiss-encryption-law https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/infomaniak-breaks-r...
raxxorraxor 1y ago
You either have anonymity or mass surveillance. There really is no alternative as the data will be collected and used. And not only by the judicial system. Also I do believe the net can survive anonymity just fine due to empirical evidence.
Yeri 1y ago
Sigh, I just moved a bunch of domains over, after The Jolly Teapot started using and recommended them. - https://thejollyteapot.com/uses https://thejollyteapot.com/uses - https://thejollyteapot.com/2024/11/05/website-updates/ https://thejollyteapot.com/2024/11/05/website-updates/
- josephb 1y ago
  Yeah it's disappointing after recently moving things over.
amarcheschi 1y ago
Jesus Christ i made an email with them a few months ago and started using it for some important accounts
sschueller 1y ago
WTF, get right out. They are the ones advertising everywhere how their cloud is 100% Swiss and can be trusted.
Bengalilol 1y ago
As sad as it undoubtedly sounds (and as if we're already saying goodbye to the utopia), I think this choice might be wiser than we initially thought. Consider the implications of AI knowing everything about you, even down to your biometric behavior. Think about the threat of disinformation campaigns targeting democracies. I know my stance may seem weak in terms of ideals, and I feel a bitter regret toward my former self. But shouldn’t we, as humans, try to honor our shared values and act accordingly? I am aware that a single hosting company won't do anything regarding those considerations, but ... anyways. I feel sorry for writing those sentences and sharing my doubts.
- diggan 1y ago
  > try to honor our shared values and act accordingly What "shared values"? Most of the values people hold as "important" has people on the other side with the opposite values, and both of those are "correct". There are no "shared values" that all humans agreed upon.
  - Bengalilol 1y ago
    Sharing is not agreeing. I can share values with someone I don't agree with. Switzerland has shared values for instance, it is a country build upon that principle. I bet every society has some. Humans too.
    - ptero 1y ago
      All people or most? If most, where is the threshold (0.1%, 1%, 10%?) for those whose values we can ignore and what should we do with those pesky people who do not share otherwise common values?
      - Bengalilol 1y ago
        Do you know Switzerland and its democratic system? I am referring to those shared values that are enshrined in the Swiss Federal Constitution: Freedom, Human dignity, Equality, Democracy, Multilingualism and cultural diversity, Federalism, Solidarity. (that is not an exhaustive list).
nonelog 1y ago
Where should I move my domain portfolio? What are the best competitors?
- mgw 1y ago
  A combination of good pricing, sane behavior and an offering with many TLDs right now is https://www.netim.com https://www.netim.com, based in France. Their UI is quite outdated, but it works ok. I've switched here after leaving Gandi. If you're fine with a US-based provider, https://porkbun.com/ https://porkbun.com/ also has good pricing and a tech oriented mindset. They don't support many ccTLDs though. In general, https://tld-list.com/ https://tld-list.com/ is the best place to research domain registrars in my opinion.
  - nonelog 1y ago
    Awesome, thanks! Will be moving this weekend. Infomaniak is dead to me.
- pzmarzly 1y ago
  I am fairly happy with Bulgarian company ClouDNS, they have a wide selection of ccTLDs for reasonable prices. https://www.cloudns.net/ https://www.cloudns.net/
chvid 1y ago
It is a fairly common attitude amongst hosting companies. And understable from a business perspective. If you are one of the few hosting companies that host truly anonymous VPN and email providers, you are going get some troublesome customers that likely are going to end up being expensive.
- nonelog 1y ago
  > understable from a business perspective. Everything can be justified as a business interest. Even criminal behavior could. So that argument is NOT acceptable. This is about a Swiss company, not Russia. If Switzerland wants to go there, let's at least be honest about it.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    Well, to be fair, they are pretty honest about it. Everything about the policy is public, and nothing will happen until it is approved.
  - GenshoTikamura 1y ago
    [dead]
rubit_xxx19 1y ago
You could work within their parameters but continually communicate an enormous amount of garbage that is not illegal but would be flagged, it would be an interesting experiment, and then they could decide whether or not they’d wish to continue. Personally, I think that privacy is a losing game, like gambling. The best case is that we all work within the parameters. But in any case, the amount of time and effort that is dedicated to privacy is keeping humanity from more important things. The main annoyance I have with companies and organizations that engage in working with our private data is that eventually they will lose control of the data, and if bad things come because of that, we are the victims. This may be our physical and mental health data, and we could lose our jobs or have to pay higher insurance. This may be our financial data, and we lose our savings for retirement. This may be our personal historical thoughts that we don’t wish to broadcast, and we lose relationships and our jobs. Privacy at one level is a luxury but at other levels are not, unless society as a whole embraces that we’re all unhealthy and we’re all flawed, but at that point perhaps things become too flexible and very bad things happen.
- nick__m 1y ago
  unless society as a whole embraces that we’re all unhealthy and we’re all flawed, but at that point perhaps things become too flexible and very bad things happen. What bad things do you see happening? I see that as a good thing, we are all flawed, to me, society internalized that fact seems to be an opportunity to make it a better more compassionate one but alas I don't see that happening in the near future.
  - rubit_xxx22 1y ago
    Germany in the early 1940s deprivatized Jewish and homosexual people by making them wear badges, then it enslaved and killed most of them. East Germany, the KGB, modern China, and many others have tried the route of getting rid of citizen privacy “for the common good” in similar ways, and it results in bad things. AIs with superhuman intelligence may have all the data, may lean utilitarian, and similarly could it not just restrict people, commit genocide, genetically modify, drug, neuter, manipulate, and euthanize like the worst of the them? I don’t know how we combat this- go offline? I would like humans to not waste much effort on privacy though, beyond what makes sense.
Kichererbsen 1y ago
Huh. I didn't see an Initiative / Referendum on that yet. Any pointers?
- misja111 1y ago
  https://www.republik.ch/2025/05/07/die-schweiz-ist-drauf-und-dran-autoritaere-ueberwachungsstaaten-zu-kopieren https://www.republik.ch/2025/05/07/die-schweiz-ist-drauf-und...
  - alex_suzuki 1y ago
    What an utterly depressing read.
enopod_ 1y ago
In other news, Proton VPN and probably email are also subject to surveillance by the Swiss Federal Intelligence Agency NDB, including decryption of VPN traffic and data retention for up to 6 months. Switzerland is no save haven for your communication needs. https://steigerlegal.ch/2025/03/29/proton-ueberwachung-keine-auskunft/ https://steigerlegal.ch/2025/03/29/proton-ueberwachung-keine... (German)
nickslaughter02 1y ago
Nym, Threema and Proton said they would leave Switzerland over this. The question is where to go. Certainly not to any EU country (ProtectEU, Chat Control). https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-would-be-less-confidential-than-google-proton-threatens-to-quit-switzerland-over-new-surveillance-law https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-would-...
- api 1y ago
  Iceland? It’s tough. The world is, overall, going through a shift toward authoritarianism of various flavors, and people are voting for it because of incredibly successful propaganda and fear of change.
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    going through a shift toward authoritarianism of various flavors It is the current establishment that is pushing for these laws. Switzerland and EU have proven you don't need authoritarianism to constantly attack privacy and security of people.
    - conradfr 1y ago
      And a lot of decision in the EU are made by unelected people, great democracy.
      - nickslaughter02 1y ago
        Unelected and anonymous. "EU Commission refuses to disclose authors behind its mass surveillance proposal" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168134
    - api 1y ago
      I see two big brands of authoritarianism on the rise right now. One is populist strongman rule, usually but not always of a right wing bent. We have this rising in the US. The other is technocratic corporatism, the model of China and it seems a faction of the EU. Both endlessly malign democracy and liberalism as decadent, chaotic, and responsible for an endless parade of bogie men they will protect you against.
priced_in 1y ago
Talking about dogging a bullet... I wanted to take back control over my emails so recently I started to look long and hard at ProtonMail, Infomaniak (kMail), Mailbox.org, and others. In the end, I chose mailbox.org. I could have been really annoyed right now given how painful updating accounts/credentials and account migration are!
zuppy 1y ago
That has been obvious to me after they requested me to upload my passport/id in order to unblock the newly paid and created account. But that happened only after the payment page, of course. I'm a little bitter, but for what I need it, I'll let it pass this time. edit: it is a business account, but I have never been asked for this anywhere else. you have all the company required data, all my required data, why do you need my id? maybe personal accounts are treated differently.
- conradfr 1y ago
  I don't remember that for Infomaniak but certainly for Hetzner.
RealStickman_ 1y ago
Well fuck, guess I'm moving all my domains again. And I just moved away from Gandi. Does anyone have recommendations for domain registrars that support .ch and .li domains and ideally also supported by lego (my current acme client of choice)?
- ldng 1y ago
  Same .....
- rayhaanj 1y ago
  I'm currently using joker.com after also migrating off of gandi.
- Beijinger 1y ago
  For .com/.net etc I can recommend internet.bs German inwx.com is not bad for country TLDs Besides the blaming of informaniak, their email hosing for 18 Euros a year is actually a pretty good deal. If you can live with US hosting for email, purelymail.com is worth a look.
  - RealStickman_ 1y ago
    Looks like INWX has a website and physical address specifically for Switzerland. I think I'll give them a try.
- rspoerri 1y ago
  I keep my swiss domains on cyon. But i dont know about lego support.
nick__m 1y ago
After reading the article, that company name takes a whole new meaning. I use to think it meant "we are maniacal about computing" (informatique in French), now I suppose it means: "we are maniac hoarder of metadata"
LudwigNagasena 1y ago
It will happen sooner or later just like it happened to their banking laws. There is no reason for the global trend of deprivatization (in all senses) to reverse.
nticompass 1y ago
I just moved my stuff from Google Drive over to Infomaniak kDrive, and I paid for a year of service... I don't really want to try to migrate 100s of gigs of data again :/
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  Please do and mention their position on this issue if asked why you are leaving.
ls612 1y ago
I thought that this proposal was broadly opposed by Swiss political parties, is this not accurate? Is there a realistic chance of this passing or is it all sound and heat?
- PrivacyDingus 1y ago
  It very much is opposed and is very unlikely to happen.
drcongo 1y ago
I was just at the start of the journey of moving our entire company over to Infomaniak from Google. Perfect timing. Anyone have suggestions for where to go instead?
kovac 1y ago
Despite it's limitations on the UX side, PGP is still the better option for email privacy I think. That and using your own domain. There's tor for the web when one needs it. None of these are ideal, but they depend a lot less on trusting third parties.
- noman-land 1y ago
  PGP suffers from lack of forward secrecy, no? It also suffers from the fact that no one uses it :D.

188 points by BafS 1y ago

The article: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/infomaniak-breaks-rank-and-comes-out-in-support-of-controversial-swiss-encryption-law https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/infomaniak-breaks-r...

raxxorraxor 1y ago

You either have anonymity or mass surveillance. There really is no alternative as the data will be collected and used. And not only by the judicial system. Also I do believe the net can survive anonymity just fine due to empirical evidence.

Yeri 1y ago

Sigh, I just moved a bunch of domains over, after The Jolly Teapot started using and recommended them. - https://thejollyteapot.com/uses https://thejollyteapot.com/uses - https://thejollyteapot.com/2024/11/05/website-updates/ https://thejollyteapot.com/2024/11/05/website-updates/

josephb 1y ago
Yeah it's disappointing after recently moving things over.

amarcheschi 1y ago

Jesus Christ i made an email with them a few months ago and started using it for some important accounts

sschueller 1y ago

WTF, get right out. They are the ones advertising everywhere how their cloud is 100% Swiss and can be trusted.

Bengalilol 1y ago

As sad as it undoubtedly sounds (and as if we're already saying goodbye to the utopia), I think this choice might be wiser than we initially thought. Consider the implications of AI knowing everything about you, even down to your biometric behavior. Think about the threat of disinformation campaigns targeting democracies. I know my stance may seem weak in terms of ideals, and I feel a bitter regret toward my former self. But shouldn’t we, as humans, try to honor our shared values and act accordingly? I am aware that a single hosting company won't do anything regarding those considerations, but ... anyways. I feel sorry for writing those sentences and sharing my doubts.

diggan 1y ago
> try to honor our shared values and act accordingly What "shared values"? Most of the values people hold as "important" has people on the other side with the opposite values, and both of those are "correct". There are no "shared values" that all humans agreed upon.
- Bengalilol 1y ago
  Sharing is not agreeing. I can share values with someone I don't agree with. Switzerland has shared values for instance, it is a country build upon that principle. I bet every society has some. Humans too.
  - ptero 1y ago
    All people or most? If most, where is the threshold (0.1%, 1%, 10%?) for those whose values we can ignore and what should we do with those pesky people who do not share otherwise common values?
    - Bengalilol 1y ago
      Do you know Switzerland and its democratic system? I am referring to those shared values that are enshrined in the Swiss Federal Constitution: Freedom, Human dignity, Equality, Democracy, Multilingualism and cultural diversity, Federalism, Solidarity. (that is not an exhaustive list).

nonelog 1y ago

Where should I move my domain portfolio? What are the best competitors?

mgw 1y ago
A combination of good pricing, sane behavior and an offering with many TLDs right now is https://www.netim.com https://www.netim.com, based in France. Their UI is quite outdated, but it works ok. I've switched here after leaving Gandi. If you're fine with a US-based provider, https://porkbun.com/ https://porkbun.com/ also has good pricing and a tech oriented mindset. They don't support many ccTLDs though. In general, https://tld-list.com/ https://tld-list.com/ is the best place to research domain registrars in my opinion.
- nonelog 1y ago
  Awesome, thanks! Will be moving this weekend. Infomaniak is dead to me.
pzmarzly 1y ago
I am fairly happy with Bulgarian company ClouDNS, they have a wide selection of ccTLDs for reasonable prices. https://www.cloudns.net/ https://www.cloudns.net/

chvid 1y ago

It is a fairly common attitude amongst hosting companies. And understable from a business perspective. If you are one of the few hosting companies that host truly anonymous VPN and email providers, you are going get some troublesome customers that likely are going to end up being expensive.

nonelog 1y ago
> understable from a business perspective. Everything can be justified as a business interest. Even criminal behavior could. So that argument is NOT acceptable. This is about a Swiss company, not Russia. If Switzerland wants to go there, let's at least be honest about it.
- spwa4 1y ago
  Well, to be fair, they are pretty honest about it. Everything about the policy is public, and nothing will happen until it is approved.
- GenshoTikamura 1y ago
  [dead]

rubit_xxx19 1y ago

You could work within their parameters but continually communicate an enormous amount of garbage that is not illegal but would be flagged, it would be an interesting experiment, and then they could decide whether or not they’d wish to continue. Personally, I think that privacy is a losing game, like gambling. The best case is that we all work within the parameters. But in any case, the amount of time and effort that is dedicated to privacy is keeping humanity from more important things. The main annoyance I have with companies and organizations that engage in working with our private data is that eventually they will lose control of the data, and if bad things come because of that, we are the victims. This may be our physical and mental health data, and we could lose our jobs or have to pay higher insurance. This may be our financial data, and we lose our savings for retirement. This may be our personal historical thoughts that we don’t wish to broadcast, and we lose relationships and our jobs. Privacy at one level is a luxury but at other levels are not, unless society as a whole embraces that we’re all unhealthy and we’re all flawed, but at that point perhaps things become too flexible and very bad things happen.

nick__m 1y ago
unless society as a whole embraces that we’re all unhealthy and we’re all flawed, but at that point perhaps things become too flexible and very bad things happen. What bad things do you see happening? I see that as a good thing, we are all flawed, to me, society internalized that fact seems to be an opportunity to make it a better more compassionate one but alas I don't see that happening in the near future.
- rubit_xxx22 1y ago
  Germany in the early 1940s deprivatized Jewish and homosexual people by making them wear badges, then it enslaved and killed most of them. East Germany, the KGB, modern China, and many others have tried the route of getting rid of citizen privacy “for the common good” in similar ways, and it results in bad things. AIs with superhuman intelligence may have all the data, may lean utilitarian, and similarly could it not just restrict people, commit genocide, genetically modify, drug, neuter, manipulate, and euthanize like the worst of the them? I don’t know how we combat this- go offline? I would like humans to not waste much effort on privacy though, beyond what makes sense.

Kichererbsen 1y ago

Huh. I didn't see an Initiative / Referendum on that yet. Any pointers?

misja111 1y ago
https://www.republik.ch/2025/05/07/die-schweiz-ist-drauf-und-dran-autoritaere-ueberwachungsstaaten-zu-kopieren https://www.republik.ch/2025/05/07/die-schweiz-ist-drauf-und...
- alex_suzuki 1y ago
  What an utterly depressing read.

enopod_ 1y ago

In other news, Proton VPN and probably email are also subject to surveillance by the Swiss Federal Intelligence Agency NDB, including decryption of VPN traffic and data retention for up to 6 months. Switzerland is no save haven for your communication needs. https://steigerlegal.ch/2025/03/29/proton-ueberwachung-keine-auskunft/ https://steigerlegal.ch/2025/03/29/proton-ueberwachung-keine... (German)

nickslaughter02 1y ago

Nym, Threema and Proton said they would leave Switzerland over this. The question is where to go. Certainly not to any EU country (ProtectEU, Chat Control). https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-would-be-less-confidential-than-google-proton-threatens-to-quit-switzerland-over-new-surveillance-law https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-would-...

api 1y ago
Iceland? It’s tough. The world is, overall, going through a shift toward authoritarianism of various flavors, and people are voting for it because of incredibly successful propaganda and fear of change.
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  going through a shift toward authoritarianism of various flavors It is the current establishment that is pushing for these laws. Switzerland and EU have proven you don't need authoritarianism to constantly attack privacy and security of people.
  - conradfr 1y ago
    And a lot of decision in the EU are made by unelected people, great democracy.
    - nickslaughter02 1y ago
      Unelected and anonymous. "EU Commission refuses to disclose authors behind its mass surveillance proposal" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44168134
  - api 1y ago
    I see two big brands of authoritarianism on the rise right now. One is populist strongman rule, usually but not always of a right wing bent. We have this rising in the US. The other is technocratic corporatism, the model of China and it seems a faction of the EU. Both endlessly malign democracy and liberalism as decadent, chaotic, and responsible for an endless parade of bogie men they will protect you against.

priced_in 1y ago

Talking about dogging a bullet... I wanted to take back control over my emails so recently I started to look long and hard at ProtonMail, Infomaniak (kMail), Mailbox.org, and others. In the end, I chose mailbox.org. I could have been really annoyed right now given how painful updating accounts/credentials and account migration are!

zuppy 1y ago

That has been obvious to me after they requested me to upload my passport/id in order to unblock the newly paid and created account. But that happened only after the payment page, of course. I'm a little bitter, but for what I need it, I'll let it pass this time. edit: it is a business account, but I have never been asked for this anywhere else. you have all the company required data, all my required data, why do you need my id? maybe personal accounts are treated differently.

conradfr 1y ago
I don't remember that for Infomaniak but certainly for Hetzner.

RealStickman_ 1y ago

Well fuck, guess I'm moving all my domains again. And I just moved away from Gandi. Does anyone have recommendations for domain registrars that support .ch and .li domains and ideally also supported by lego (my current acme client of choice)?

ldng 1y ago
Same .....
rayhaanj 1y ago
I'm currently using joker.com after also migrating off of gandi.
Beijinger 1y ago
For .com/.net etc I can recommend internet.bs German inwx.com is not bad for country TLDs Besides the blaming of informaniak, their email hosing for 18 Euros a year is actually a pretty good deal. If you can live with US hosting for email, purelymail.com is worth a look.
- RealStickman_ 1y ago
  Looks like INWX has a website and physical address specifically for Switzerland. I think I'll give them a try.
rspoerri 1y ago
I keep my swiss domains on cyon. But i dont know about lego support.

nick__m 1y ago

After reading the article, that company name takes a whole new meaning. I use to think it meant "we are maniacal about computing" (informatique in French), now I suppose it means: "we are maniac hoarder of metadata"

LudwigNagasena 1y ago

It will happen sooner or later just like it happened to their banking laws. There is no reason for the global trend of deprivatization (in all senses) to reverse.

nticompass 1y ago

I just moved my stuff from Google Drive over to Infomaniak kDrive, and I paid for a year of service... I don't really want to try to migrate 100s of gigs of data again :/

nickslaughter02 1y ago
Please do and mention their position on this issue if asked why you are leaving.

ls612 1y ago

I thought that this proposal was broadly opposed by Swiss political parties, is this not accurate? Is there a realistic chance of this passing or is it all sound and heat?

PrivacyDingus 1y ago
It very much is opposed and is very unlikely to happen.

drcongo 1y ago

I was just at the start of the journey of moving our entire company over to Infomaniak from Google. Perfect timing. Anyone have suggestions for where to go instead?

kovac 1y ago

Despite it's limitations on the UX side, PGP is still the better option for email privacy I think. That and using your own domain. There's tor for the web when one needs it. None of these are ideal, but they depend a lot less on trusting third parties.

noman-land 1y ago
PGP suffers from lack of forward secrecy, no? It also suffers from the fact that no one uses it :D.