[fvargas]

Protonmail has also given in and paid out thousands* to criminals who DDoS their systems, no?

*In my original post I mistakenly wrote "millions"

[tony101]

(Note: The parent comment claimed that ProtonMail paid "millions" in ransom. It appears to have been edited to say "thousands" now.)

I am not affiliated with ProtonMail, but the answer is no. ProtonMail has paid a ransom exactly once, back in 2015 when it was just launched and suffered a DDOS attack that caused a lot of collateral damage to third parties, who pressured ProtonMail to pay the ransom.

ProtonMail has since committed to "never pay another ransom" and invested in advanced DDOS mitigation capabilities, including by becoming its own ISP.

Sources:

https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-ddos-attacks/

https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/email-ddos-pro...

[xref]

All I’ve heard is they once paid $6000 to stop a ddos in 2015 at the demand of their hosting isp.