- Months ago, I opened a free Proton account to use with an auth provider for my family's photo site.
- Recently, I opened firstname.lastname@proton.me, migrated all my gmail, and paid for Proton.
- I hadn't anticipated some missing features, so I opened a support ticket to downgrade and park the account for later.
- Proton downgraded and refunded, but UI bugs the support rep couldn't solve stopped me from deleting my imported mail, so my account was over the free limit and hosed.
- I was feeling zany and created about three joke accounts transposing the first and last initials of tech executives, for example pundar.sichai. You can't check if a Proton account is available without creating it, so I created a few and deleted a few. Should I have done that? No. No. It was dumb.
- The Proton abuse system locked all my accounts and I started the appeal process.
- The abuse rep said he'd restored access to my firstname.lastname account for 48 hours "as a goodwill gesture" so I could get my data. The context was literally: "We're de-platforming you, here's two days to get your stuff." But, the account was still locked.
- I replied from my (non-Proton) professional email, as a business matter. I soberly pointed out that the account was still locked, that an account used for my family photo site had been caught in the crossfire, and that Proton's response was rather excessive.
- The abuse guy unlocked my family photo account, but the account with my old gmail was still locked. I pointed that out.
- The abuse guy told me he would only restore one account "due to my actions" (despite having previously told me something else) so I'm stuck with ~4 GB of un-deletable personal data in Proton's cloud at firstname.lastname@proton.me.
I'm sure that data is quite secure, but that's... really crappy. Now I'll always have to worry that the old mail on that account will get out. Am I very sorry I created joke accounts on Proton? Yes. Yes I am. But, I don't think I'm nuts to say Proton's abuse team screwed this situation up and tarnished the Proton brand. As a final note, the number of emails I've ever sent from Proton to anyone but a Proton support rep: zero.
Ironic.