With increasing regularity, legal processes have coerced email providers into handing over targeted users’ emails. However, this is not a 100% assurance of your privacy for a few reasons. Ideally, the only people who can read the content of your email are you, your friends, and the email provider itself. This makes sure that the minute you press send from your inbox, the email should not be eavesdropped on by anyone on its way between your and your friends’ email providers. Most email providers use a protocol called TLS, or Transport Layer Security to securely deliver email between the sender and recipient’s servers. Let’s dig a little further into how and why that might happen. If you’re already curious about ProtonMail, then you are probably keenly aware that email communication can be spied upon.

Android and iOS apps are also available for mobile, and those with a Plus account can also use a tool called The ProtonMail Bridge to check your email from Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or your desktop client of choice. This guide takes you through how to safely and effectively use ProtonMail’s web app, which you access via your browser at. If you’ve never used PGP, or need a refresher on the fundamentals, have a look at one of EFF’s excellent explainers. If you’re already used to using a client like Mailvelope, Thunderbird with Enigmail, or Apple Mail with GPGTools, you already have a good basis for getting started. PGP is famously tricky to use, but through its design, ProtonMail simplifies things a great deal. ProtonMail uses PGP - Pretty Good Privacy, an encryption standard commonly used for encrypting the content of emails. This means that, communication between anyone whose email is managed by ProtonMail can only be viewed by members of that party no outside parties, including ProtonMail itself, can view the content of any messages sent through the service.

ProtonMail is a Switzerland-based email client that offers end-to-end encryption between its users by default.

Make new proton email