This is Part 1 of a two part series. Click here to to read Part 2: 5 Reasons why you should NOT use ProtonMail for your email.
You send an email to your spouse expressing your thoughts about last week’s visit to your relatives. You are not diplomatic in this email but rant about the drama that occurred over dinner because her uncle wouldn’t stop talking about politics.
Or maybe you send a copy of your driver’s license to a potential employer so that they can run a background check on you.
Can you think of an email that you’ve sent in the past that would cause you personal, professional, of financial harm if it was exposed to the world?
This is not a thought experiment. It’s an extremely real and urgent issue. In 2016 Yahoo reported that it’s servers had been breached and the account information of millions was potentially exposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_data_breaches
We live in a world where we not only constantly send sensitive information over the internet but we also keep all of that information permanently sitting online. All of the emails that you’ve ever sent are sitting in the sent folder of your Google or Yahoo or Outlook account and when those services are hacked (and it is a question of when, not if) it is not only your current emails that will be exposed but your entire history of emails.
So what can a normal person do about this? Traditional encrypted email (the most popular of which is something called PGP) is too difficult for the average person to use and requires that both the email sender and receiver are using the same encrypted email system.
The best solution comes from a Swiss company called ProtonMail. Founded by former physics scientists this company aims to provide a simple and easy to use service that encrypts your emails and protect you against the sort of breaches that have happened with Yahoo and other companies.
Here are the 5 best reasons why you should be using ProtonMail instead of Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, or any other email service.
1. ProtonMail is “double encrypted”
When you send a piece of information over the internet you run the risk of having an eavesdropper intercept that information and read it. To protect against this ProtonMail encrypts every single email that leaves your computer with something called TLS.
TLS means that your email is encrypted going from your computer to ProtonMail and then is also encrypted to the destination as long as the destination supports TLS encryption. Modern email systems like Gmail and Outlook support TLS encryption.
The problem with TLS is that this encryption uses a lock and key that is controlled by ProtonMail. So while your information will be safe from external eavesdroppers, ProtonMail can theoretically read that email if they wanted to. And that’s where the “double encryption” comes in.
The second layer of encryption kicks in if you send an email to another person who is using ProtonMail. In this case the email is first encrypted using PGP and then is encrypted further using TLS. This creates two layers of encryption for your email.
The PGP layer of encryption uses a lock and key that only you have, not even ProtonMail can read this email. When you send an email to another ProtonMail users you encrypt it using that user’s public key, and then only that user can read that email since the only thing that can open that email is their private key that only they know. The cool thing with ProtonMail is that this process of locking and opening the email happens completely automatically.
2. Email is stored encrypted
One of the best reasons to use ProtonMail is that your archive of previous emails (which can sometimes be years worth of emails) is stored using PGP encryption and can only be opened by you.
When you go to mail.protonmail.com you’re asked to put in your password and the ProtonMail website decrypts your emails. Unlike Gmail the employees at ProtonMail have no way to read your email because it is stored in their data center in an encrypted lockbox.
So if ProtonMail is hacked and data is exposed all the hackers will get is the encrypted lockbox but they will be unable to open that lockbox to actually read your emails.
So if you have a saved email that looks like this:
Hello Tim,
Thank you for those financial statements. You can go ahead and make the deal for $30,000. This is confidential information so make sure no one is told until the deal is finalized.
Regards,
Steve
Then a hacker who manages to hack in and get your encrypted ProtonMail data will only see this:
—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—– 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 dlz52QERGV7xBJOx5VC1LTrl+6Z+jv9Zl2bTC+06txWSyeROJJZB7MsfzS+X3qGi BZ1zpiYJAm2LXw== =4iwN —–END PGP MESSAGE—–
Without your password it’s complete gibberish. This is why ProtonMail is so secure against hacking attempts. Even if ProtonMail is hacked the information that a hacker can steal is almost useless.
3. ProtonMail offers two factor authentication
Just using ProtonMail with a strong password is quite secure. However to increase security further ProtonMail includes a feature called two factor authentication.
If you turn on two factor authentication then when you enter your password ProtonMail will also send a code to your cell phone that you’ll have to enter after your password. This protects your account even if someone steals or guesses your password as they would need both your password and your cell phone in order to open your emails.
It’s a very powerful security feature and if you do open a ProtonMail account I suggest that you turn it on.
4. ProtonMail does not spy on your emails or use them for advertising
This is one of the biggest reasons why I started using ProtonMail. If you’re using Gmail or some other service then your email is being constantly scanned by Google and tracked.
Here’s a quick eye-opener that will shock you: if you’re using Gmail there’s a page that you can open that will show you every purchase that you’ve ever made online. Google knows all of this about you because their system is constantly reading your emails and keeping records of everything that you’ve done online. Click on this link and see for yourself: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases
ProtonMail makes its money not by collecting your data or selling access to you but by selling subscriptions. They offer professional and business subscriptions that people pay for. This is different from Google which tends to concentrate on offering free services in exchange for your permission to track you and collect data about you.
5. It’s free
All of this security is free! If you just need a basic account for personal email you can sign up without paying anything.
Later if you decide that you need one of their extra features (such as using ProtonMail with your Outlook application) or more storage you can purchase one of the paid subscriptions. But I like the fact that you can try ProtonMail for free and it’s not a trial or limited product, it’s the real deal.
However I want to provide a balanced look at ProtonMail and no service is perfect. That’s why you should also read Part 2 of this series: 5 Reasons why you should NOT use ProtonMail for your email