In the process, Proton has gone from a crowdfunded idea of a better Internet, to being at the forefront of the global privacy wave. Privacy has gone from being an afterthought, to the main focus of a lot of discussions about the future of the Internet. (It declined to break out email users vs other products when we asked.)Ĭommenting in a statement, Andy Yen, founder and CEO, said: “The conversation about privacy has shifted surprisingly quickly in the past seven years. It’s a notable milestone for a services provider that intentionally does not have a data business - opting instead for a privacy pledge based on zero access architecture that means it has no way to decrypt the contents of ProtonMail users’ emails.Īlthough, to be clear, the 50M+ figure applies to total users of all its products (which includes a VPN offering), not just users of its e2e encrypted email. So much for “privacy”.End-to-end encrypted email provider ProtonMail has officially confirmed it’s passed 50 million users globally as it turns seven years old. I will be looking for alternatives going forward. It’s also concerning that Proton is surreptitiously snooping on accounts to arbitrarily flag and close them without warning.

It’s too bad proton has to rely on error-prone AI to do their work than an actual person with critical thinking skills to address a simple question. As of this writing I have not received a response. I requested in plain English clarity on exactly what ”abuse” allegedly occurred. That doesn’t give me any meaningful information as to what “abuse” allegedly occurred. The customer service agent gave me a vague answer that their anti abuse system automatically “flagged” the account. I was shocked to read this and naturally appealed it. All was good until one day proton mail decided to close my account for a suspected “privacy violation”. Proton mail seemed promising with their claim to being a “private, secure and encrypted email service” - a perfect match so I thought. I switched to proton mail from one of the larger email providers precisely to avoid snooping by those companies. Let me preface by saying that I had high hopes for proton mail initially.

Proton secure email