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In a long blog post , a BestVPN.co website editor embarked on a long demonstration to highlight the links between Protonmail and a Lithuanian data mining company, Tesonet, based in Lithuania. The editor puts forward several elements to justify these accusations: on the one hand, ProtonVPN and Tesonet share the same premises for their headquarters, a building located in Vilnius.

The companies also share several employees, as well as the same CEO: Darius Bereika. According to the writers of BestVPN.co, Bereika is both listed in some registers as both the head of Tesonet and founding member of the entity Cyber Alliance, a company behind ProtonVPN. In addition to these similarities, the writers of BestVPN.co point out that the ProtonVPN mobile application uses a certificate signed in the name of Tesonet, proof according to them of the close links between this data mining company and the secure messaging provider.

The demonstration is worth the detour: with the help of accusatory headlines, Godwin point and typographic emphasis, the authors of BestVPN.co attempt to demonstrate the close links between Protonmail and the company Tesonet.

The survey uses a post published on the Hackernews website, a community-based website for publishing articles related to new technologies, which reported that Protonmail had a Lithuanian entity sharing premises with Tesonet, and left to hear in passing that the service NordVPN was also in the hands of the company Tesonet, without bringing this time of conclusive element.

And all this argument ends with an eloquent end point from the writers of BestVPN.co: "Note: People who are already looking for an alternative to ProtonVPN can visit our site for secure VPN services. This has the merit of clarifying the intentions of the author: the site BestVPN.co offers comparisons between different providers of VPN services. ProtonVPN does not appear in their search results.

Protonmail admits working with other human beings

As wobbly as it may seem, the publication of this argument was enough to sow doubt among Protonmail and ProtonVPN users, who called on the developers. The company was forced down the arena (understand: Reddit and Hackernews) to explain.

In several messages, Protonmail explains the situation : Protonmail has indeed several partnerships with companies, including Tesonet. In 2015, faced with the difficulties posed by Google including Protonmail has sought cheap labor in several countries of Eastern Europe: Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Macedonia were the places chosen for put this plan in place.

In the absence of a seat in these different countries, Protonmail has made agreements with these partners: they have recruited employees to work on Protonmail technologies. "Although our first recruitments in Vilnius and Skopje were working full time on Protonmail, they were on paper used by our local partners because we did not have a structure that could do it," says Reddit one of the founders from Protonmail.

He goes on to explain that following the resolution of the problems encountered by Protonmail in 2015, the company was able to open two subsidiaries in Macedonia and Lithuania in order to take under its wing the employees recruited through these partners.

However, Protonmail said that "for historical reasons, some connections to our local partners remain": the certificate signed on behalf of Tesonet in the Protonmail application is an error due to the fact that at the time of registration of the application, the developer responsible for its design was legally employed by Tesonet. "Because of the operation of the Google Play Store, it is impossible to change this mention, but it remains under our sole control. "

Protonmail is therefore facing a wave of misinformation and does not hesitate to cite its origin: competition. Protonmail emphasizes that the site BestVPN.co is owned by the company PureVPN, a VPN provider and that the initial information published on Hackernews and taken over by the editors of the site comes from the head of another competing service based in the United States, Private Internet Access. Charges that are difficult to verify as well, but that say enough about the wonderful atmosphere in the consumer VPN industry.

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