Can we trust Proton Mail / Proton VPN?

Across the site, we recommend Proton products like Proton VPN, Proton Mail, and Proton Docs for end-to-end encrypted documents.

Concerns about Proton

In January 2025, Proton's CEO praised a Trump appointee.

Some interpreted this as a sign that Proton was aligning themselves with authoritarian forces and that our data was no longer safe there. We take a different stance.

We think Proton is still a trustworthy option

After investigating this, we've decided to continue recommending certain Proton services. While concerning, we view this as an unfortunate misstep rather than a threat to user privacy or data security. We don't see it as a pattern, but as a wildly tone-deaf choice.

We believe in recommending tools that balance strong security with usability. We want to suggest tools that people will actually adopt and use consistently. Proton Mail and Proton Docs are the most user-friendly options for encrypted email and document collaboration. And we include Proton VPN because our users wanted us to list a free VPN option.

We will keep an eye on this situation and change our recommendations if Proton continues to make concerning moves.

If you are in high-risk group...

If you are in a very high-risk category of activist (doing very high-profile work, or doing work that is targeted by this administration), you probably want to avoid Proton for sensitive communications. That said, we recommend avoiding any email service for sensitive communications regardless of which service you choose. Those communications should be happening on Signal with disappearing messages turned on.

If you want to put in the work to use a different encrypted email system, there are other options like Tuta and Mailbox.org.