I believe a competitor of theirs has been actively trying to spread distrust of them on HN. I don't remember the details well, but I think they allege that ProtonVPN and ProtonMail aren't independent from each other when they claim they are.
There is a smear campaign going on, but not about precisely this. The smear campaign is that since ProtonVPN is free, it must be doing something nefarious.
ProtonMail and ProtonVPN are legally separate, but they are both part of the Proton family of projects which originated from CERN.
I'm not sure what competitor you're referring to, I don't think they have many of those (tutanota, maybe? Or startmail?) but I assure you I don't work for one of those. There's not another email provider I have significantly more trust in or that I think does everything right while protonmail does everything wrong, there's just a minor sticky feeling that I have using them.
