What do you think about this take? For me the writer comes of quite biased and not quite fully knowledgeable about Proton. This particular journalist also tends to praise and recommend all google product.
Edit: fixed spelling
He has no idea what he is talking about. And he complains that he needs to pay for a service and everything should be free in his mind, for Proton Bridge for example. He is complaining that Proton is not encrypting emails when sending other providers because he simple doesn’t know how to do it.
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The author makes multiple claims that don’t feel thoughtfully considered.
Proton Mail’s encryption is only fully enforceable when both parties use the service.
Proton offers external mailbox encryption by way of both PGP-interop and Password-protected Email.
If you have a Google account with a strong password and two-factor authentication enabled, you already have an email inbox that’s as secure as Proton Mail can offer. The latter doesn’t offer any additional security, so you shouldn’t switch over to it for that reason alone.
A confusing statement because the author themselves also notes that Proton offers “Zero-knowledge Encryption” of your emails even if not received encrypted with your public key. This security benefit is not available on gmail.
And while 1GB of storage is certainly still usable if you keep a zero-inbox philosophy, it likely won’t be enough eventually
I’ve never given it much thought but the email account I have had for 2 decades is currently using less than a quarter of 1GB so this is more than enough for a free tier in my opinion.
Google’s inactivity policy extends to two years, which is far more reasonable for such a permanent action.
Fair criticism in my opinion. 6 (Tuta) - 12(PM) months is too short. However, the inactivity timer does not apply to paid accounts.
While I could overlook most of the caveats I’ve mentioned so far if Proton Mail was free, the reality is that you’ll end up paying for the service at some point.
Perhaps anything free should be approached with a degree of skeptism:
On the other hand, services like Gmail make zero privacy promises and can scan the contents of your inbox to show you targeted ads.
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Which is something they don’t even do since 2017. What of course is more valuable to them is a user logged in, and being able to tie what search queries, youtube videos and stuff they buy to a particular account.
Likely this is because it has direct context to that user. For example with an email you might receive some email talking about baby products, but have no intention of buying them, because you don’t have a baby. If you however purchased a product while logged in they would be able to see easily that you actively sought that product.
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I do somewhat agree with the article. The privacy benefit of Proton Mail is negligible out of the box unless both end users are using Proton Mail. Proton users would benefit from their built-in privacy features such as PGP, which could come in handy if needed, but that would require the other end user to set up PGP as well. And with zero encryption knowledge, it’s nice to know that Proton can’t read my e-mails, but the same can’t be said if you send your emails to a Gmail account. To the author, the privacy features are almost pointless. Also, criticizing their subscription model isn’t the same as saying I want everything for free. They’re saying the subscription model is a good deal if you’re interested in their bundle.
Two points that I would disagree with is “the lack of sender images in the email list for a significant number of senders”. Isn’t that the point of using a PRIVACY-centered app? If you need to verify that your emails are coming from the right sender, that’s what PGP is for. Also, “Proton Mail will purge all data from free accounts after just one year of inactivity”. One year is long enough, even for occasional use.
I currently use Proton Mail after switching from Yahoo (never used Gmail). But knowing what I know about Proton Mail, how it works, how it differs from other email clients, and what the users would benefit from using Proton Mail, I don’t think I could convince anyone to switch from Gmail. They would probably try Proton Mail the same way the author did, question how the emails are supposed to be private, and then switch back to Gmail or iCloud or Yahoo etc.
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I’ll just quickly note for the thread that while your reply quotes me this was a quote of the article. I didn’t mention anything on it for the use of the word “can”. It’s always possible one may wish to select an email provider less likely to return to this behavior in the future.
My point was the back and forth nature of the article where, to me, it felt there existed contradictions throughout.
That kind of sounds like: I dont think home security system worths it as it does not protect me when I am out….
The same goes to VPN, password managers, even messengers as well.
To me the logic behind is so flawed.
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What does home security mean in your analogy? Because my home should have a lock, but that doesn’t mean I want to set-up CCTV cameras.
Fair review honestly. Proton Mail still has a lot of features missing. One he didn’t mention is Gmail’s automatic category. Gmail will automatically put all your newsletters in one categories for example. I miss that.
About @Bhaelros critic, I think there is even fewer PGP users than Proton users, so yes non-relevant IMO.
It bugs me a little bit as the author simply mix up two very different things, i.e.
a) Privacy and Security of the data you own, and
b) Privacy and Security of the data you HANDED OUT (i.e. you no longer own).
While there are plenty ways to improve a), I think the only party in the world can truly improve b) is YOU.
Yet the author fantasized that they could pay a small sum and get someone to do it for them, and when the author (finally) understand the reality, they discredited the company and dismissed the concept of using a privacy friendly tool.
I don’t think he made a big deal about it, but it was a realization that his emails weren’t going to be private anyway, and that he should just continue using Signal/Whatshapp for private stuff.
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I didn’t agree with everything he said, proton makes money directly from the consumer which is something you want from a privacy perspective. It was never going to be free. He gets stuck on this, and it gets in the way of some valid criticism.
The android app is missing quite a few features. Not just to competitors but even to the web and Iphone app.
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Enhanced tracking protection is missing, along with showing remote images through a proxy. IOS and the web app have this…
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Message content search is only on the web app and does not sync at all. Ente’s index can sync, and it handles photos, although they do use local ai.
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Sender images, he’s completely right. Why are they missing in the mobile app?
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Proton Bridge… Why is this the only option for paid users. We should be able to use IMAP with OpenPGP through third party mail clients like K-9 Mail. It’s a weird limitation.
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Swiping gesture definitely need some work. Swiping through emails, nope? The sidebar cannot be swiped open unless you do it from the top. I have never seen this so badly implemented in any other mail client.
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Text formatting is needed.
Honestly, some of it can be annoying and if Proton doesn’t work for you no shame sticking with Gmail or Outlook. Or better yet, you could use mailbox.org or Infomaniak, which are just better options then Google and Microsoft even without PGP enabled.
I do wish Proton would improve though. Calling Proton small isn’t exactly accurate anymore, sure they’re no Google but fixing problems in their mail client should be easy for them at this point. It is their core offering after all.
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Whatsapp is end to end encrypted but most people store a backup un iCloud or Google Drive un plain test. There is a relatively new option to end to end encrypt it but I don’t think that my contacts use it 
IMO that’s the main reason to move away from WhatsApp to Signal.
I’m pretty against their advertising via signatures approach and not having a free mail bridge to Thunderbird. I can’t in good conscience give money to a company that forces me to delete their advertising on every message. I’ve always been of the opinion that personal email should be free and at a permanent address that isn’t dependent on money so you can stay in contact with people. Protonmail does check that box but it doesn’t shield them from scummy practices like this.
I used tuta instead usually, but its not very suitable for a main email they get spam filtered a lot.
in this case I think you actually can give money to proton because the signature can be changed or disabled.
You just go to Account Setting → Display name and signature, and you can change or remove the signature.
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That’s a good point, but how is the messages stored ? Because I remember that as user I couldn’t see my backed-up messages, so I wonder where they were stored
This is what is shown when you try to turn it off.
Anything added is on top of the proton ad. Apparently having an ad in my email name isn’t enough for them.
This is standard I think Apple does the same. You can always remove it manually when you send the mail. Or subscribe and actually contribute to the service, servers and engineers do not fall from the sky…
I don’t donate to companies that force ads on people.
I am not sure this is donating as more of paying for a premium service.