Federal authorities arrested a 58-year-old Colorado Springs man after unravelling the origin of a "Declaration Of War" that threatened harm or death to Elon Musk, owners of his Tesla vehicles, and members of President Donald Trump's Cabinet.
There’s not enough info in here to know how Google was involved if he sent the emails from Proton. Proton absolutely does not cotton to illegal shit, and actionable threats would be up there with LEO compliance.
My guess is he was on a VPN and had logins from a Proton account, validated with a burner phone he kept, and was also logging on to a personal Gmail or using some Google service that identifies him while in the same VPN location. Proton and the VPN give up an IP address that corroborates to what Big G tracks to him.
Edit: even a no-log VPN would likely be compelled to confirm a user at an IP address at a certain time. That’s not a a “log” per se…
Idiot should have known to change his VPN location between instances and/or use TOR like a big boy, but mental health issues seem to be there driving force, not rationality.
There’s not enough info in here to know how Google was involved if he sent the emails from Proton. Proton absolutely does not cotton to illegal shit, and actionable threats would be up there with LEO compliance.
My guess is he was on a VPN and had logins from a Proton account, validated with a burner phone he kept, and was also logging on to a personal Gmail or using some Google service that identifies him while in the same VPN location. Proton and the VPN give up an IP address that corroborates to what Big G tracks to him.
Edit: even a no-log VPN would likely be compelled to confirm a user at an IP address at a certain time. That’s not a a “log” per se…
Idiot should have known to change his VPN location between instances and/or use TOR like a big boy, but mental health issues seem to be there driving force, not rationality.
Any good guides out there for actual privacy to avoid the pitfalls of ahem being an idiot (re: am idiot)
Leave your digital devices at home and don’t do illegal stuff on them.
Don’t do illegal stuff that makes people paid to find you come looking for you.
Nothing done online is anonymous enough that you should do or type anything you wouldn’t want to read out loud in a court.
Privacy subreddit and privacyguides.org both are good starting places.