Proton Drive iOS and Android Apps Now Available for Encrypted Cloud Storage

[DrJR]

I see Proton critically. They say that they are all about privacy, but it is very hard to sign out for their services without giving them your mobile number.

And then of course their was this scandal:

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities | TechCrunch

ProtonMail, a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French

techcrunch.com

Of course a service based in Switzerland is still better than anything in the US, but you should never access any Proton services without Tor or a VPN.

To be really, really secure, don’t access any services.

 

[nt5672]

Super excited for this. Proton is still developing a lot of basic features, but it’s actually a lot cheaper for me than paying for iCloud and a separate VPN, and I never have to worry about anyone being able to access my files but me. No stressing about Apple starting to invade my privacy with their iCloud photo scanning.

Until Apple considers it a competitor to iCould and removes the App. Hopefully, there is a web interface.

 

[sparky1499]

Are you watching Nordlocker?

 

[Jim Lahey]

Beneficiary of the EC, which is basically the EU? The same EU that wants to detonate encrypted consumer communications. I’m making no claims here but I trust this company no more than any other. Others may feel differently but bottom line is that any company that wants to stay in business will, sooner or later, kowtow to the regulators. Switzerland Schmitzerland. Trust no one…

 

[DaveTheRave]

I see Proton critically. They say that they are all about privacy, …

I see Apple critically, too. They say they are all about privacy but then store Chinese users’ iCloud data in China where it is far less secure than in the USA. And Apple holds the keys for the end-to-end encryption of our iMessages.

 

[Marie.D]

The problem is services like these use the “encrypted” monicker to overcharge for storage. I’ve been using Cryptomator with iCloud and a backup to Google Drive. Regular, “plain” storage is just way cheaper on the long run, and by encrypting yourself with a £8 app like Cryptomator you are sure no one will ever decrypt your data without your consent & behind your back. Proton is known to give in easily to frivolous court orders. I do not trust them anymore, they have shown multiple times to be untrustworthy.

 

[Jim Lahey]

I see Apple critically, too. They say they are all about privacy but then store Chinese users’ iCloud data in China where it is far less secure than in the USA. And Apple holds the keys for the end-to-end encryption of our iMessages.

Not to mention that they hold the keys to your entire device backup if you use iCloud backups. Apple talks the talk but for a company purporting to be the paragon of security and privacy, they don’t impress me much. I’m still waiting for an answer as to why the camera shortcut can’t be removed from the iOS Lock Screen. I suspect it’s a surreptitious vector of entry for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, but that’s idle speculation on my part. Long and short of it is Apple ain’t all that. They’ll buckle at the first intelligence agency demand that threatens their bottom line. Just like all of them, really. Including Proton.

 

[Ash Pole]

I stopped using and canceled my sub to ProtonMail after they ratted-out a activist (not terrorist) to the French gov’t. The activist wasn’t even suspected of committing a crime. This alienated many of Proton’s base. Proton is basically a honeypot that cannot be trusted. And their location in Switzerland means absolutely nothing….it’s simply marketing. You’re a hundred times more secure using TrueCrypt or Cryptomator.

 

[ghanwani]

I stopped using and canceled my sub to ProtonMail after they ratted-out a activist (not terrorist) to the French gov’t. The activist wasn’t even suspected of committing a crime. This alienated many of Proton’s base. Proton is basically a honeypot that cannot be trusted. And their location in Switzerland means absolutely nothing….it’s simply marketing. You’re a hundred times more secure using TrueCrypt or Cryptomator.

What do you use for email now?

Also, what do you think they should have done in this instance? It sounds like they were asked to provide certain information and they were forced to comply. What ProtonMail says is that they have built their service so that they simply don't have access to your email, so even if someone asks them for it, there is no way to provide it.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

I stopped using and canceled my sub to ProtonMail after they ratted-out a activist (not terrorist) to the French gov’t. The activist wasn’t even suspected of committing a crime. This alienated many of Proton’s base. Proton is basically a honeypot that cannot be trusted. And their location in Switzerland means absolutely nothing….it’s simply marketing. You’re a hundred times more secure using TrueCrypt or Cryptomator.

What choice did they have? That is not ratted-out at all, it's the law. If there is an active investigation then they have to enable it, and more so they also notify the subject that they've received such a request. This can't happen without the courts involved, ergo "wasn't even suspected of committing a crime.." is not really true as then it wouldn't pass the threshold to use such measures.

The service itself wasn't wrong, the activist continuing to use the same address for all their activities is a bit silly if they don't want to be found...

 

[spinedoc77]

Good stuff, I'll definitely be trying out the free plan for now, if it works well I can see migrating away from OneDrive and Google Drive. I like their VPN services, but was never able to get decent speeds with them.

 

[txscott]

So, does Apple's announcement of end to end encryption (encryption keys only on trusted devices) for iCloud Drive change anybody's perception of this offering from proton?

 

[zakarhino]

I see Proton critically. They say that they are all about privacy, but it is very hard to sign out for their services without giving them your mobile number.

And then of course their was this scandal:

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities | TechCrunch

ProtonMail, a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French

techcrunch.com

Of course a service based in Switzerland is still better than anything in the US, but you should never access any Proton services without Tor or a VPN.

I stopped using and canceled my sub to ProtonMail after they ratted-out a activist (not terrorist) to the French gov’t. The activist wasn’t even suspected of committing a crime. This alienated many of Proton’s base. Proton is basically a honeypot that cannot be trusted. And their location in Switzerland means absolutely nothing….it’s simply marketing. You’re a hundred times more secure using TrueCrypt or Cryptomator.

The activist made the mistake of logging into his account with his raw IP. Proton debunked this entire story. I'm the first one to bark at companies for failing to protect user's privacy even at the slightest infraction but I sincerely believe Proton did almost everything right in this instance except for not clearly stating the limits of their service's "anonymity" (i.e, not explicitly outlining Swiss law regarding logging of IPs in the case of a criminal investigation). Importantly, almost everything ProtonMail CAN keep secret with E2EE WAS kept secret -- namely, the contents of emails. It's not possible for any company to prevent IP logging under any circumstances so the activist should have done his research and never touched that website without onion routing or a VPN.

If a major government like France approaches your company with a legal search warrant cosigned by Swiss authorities (even if all of us including Proton think the warrant was signed under morally dubious circumstances) you have to comply. In this instance Swiss law should be changed.

That's the beautiful thing about companies using E2EE technology, they can follow the law completely and comply with every search warrant whilst maintaining a high level of privacy for their customers. Look at Signal, if they were raided right now what information could they provide? Almost nothing of substance. This is why I've been pleading with Apple to enable E2EE across their entire iCloud stack and they've finally taken a major step in that direction with today's announcement. The problem is when government try to effectively outlaw encryption by requiring backdoors (EU are actively trying to do this and US politicians have floated the idea too), that's what we need to fight.

I still trust Proton. Out of all the online email providers they provide the best balance of reliability, feature set (Drive, Calendar, SimpleLogin soon to be Proton Mask, VPN), privacy, and security.

 

[zakarhino]

Finally! I have 3TB of storage with them and use this all the time for file backups and sharing sensitive information with people I'm working with. The big piece of the puzzle currently missing is a desktop app that enables native integration with Finder (Dropbox style). Once we have that I don't ever need to look at Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud Files again.

I love the work Proton are doing and can't wait for their transformation of SimpleLogin. They're planning on expanding the capabilities of that system to not only offer alias emails but temporary debit card and phone numbers too! That will be huge.

 

[Mac_tech]

Finally! I have 3TB of storage with them and use this all the time for file backups and sharing sensitive information with people I'm working with. The big piece of the puzzle currently missing is a desktop app that enables native integration with Finder (Dropbox style). Once we have that I don't ever need to look at Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud Files again.

I love the work Proton are doing and can't wait for their transformation of SimpleLogin. They're planning on expanding the capabilities of that system to not only offer alias emails but temporary debit card and phone numbers too! That will be huge.

The desktop applications are coming soon from what I’ve read.

 

[Mac_tech]

The activist made the mistake of logging into his account with his raw IP. Proton debunked this entire story. I'm the first one to bark at companies for failing to protect user's privacy even at the slightest infraction but I sincerely believe Proton did almost everything right in this instance except for not clearly stating the limits of their service's "anonymity" (i.e, not explicitly outlining Swiss law regarding logging of IPs in the case of a criminal investigation). Importantly, almost everything ProtonMail CAN keep secret with E2EE WAS kept secret -- namely, the contents of emails. It's not possible for any company to prevent IP logging under any circumstances so the activist should have done his research and never touched that website without onion routing or a VPN.

If a major government like France approaches your company with a legal search warrant cosigned by Swiss authorities (even if all of us including Proton think the warrant was signed under morally dubious circumstances) you have to comply. In this instance Swiss law should be changed.

That's the beautiful thing about companies using E2EE technology, they can follow the law completely and comply with every search warrant whilst maintaining a high level of privacy for their customers. Look at Signal, if they were raided right now what information could they provide? Almost nothing of substance. This is why I've been pleading with Apple to enable E2EE across their entire iCloud stack and they've finally taken a major step in that direction with today's announcement. The problem is when government try to effectively outlaw encryption by requiring backdoors (EU are actively trying to do this and US politicians have floated the idea too), that's what we need to fight.

I still trust Proton. Out of all the online email providers they provide the best balance of reliability, feature set (Drive, Calendar, SimpleLogin soon to be Proton Mask, VPN), privacy, and security.

Thanks for the detailed post.

SimpleLogin (proton Mask, fill me in what’s this? I just subscribed to them at the end of November.

 

[zakarhino]

Thanks for the detailed post.

SimpleLogin (proton Mask, fill me in what’s this? I just subscribed to them at the end of November.

SimpleLogin is an email alias service that lets you generate unlimited alias email addresses for when you sign up to services, newsletters, etc. It's almost entirely similar to Apple's Hide My Email except SimpleLogin is an open source implementation (so you know exactly what's going on with your data), not tied to your Apple ID, and finally owned by a company with a long track record for protecting privacy: Proton.

Most people might have an email address like jim@wikipedia.com that they use all over the web for everything. The problem is many people that get your address abuse it by passing it off to spammers or if a service gets hacked bad actors can search the database for your email address and know that account belongs to you.

Email aliases let you generate unlimited random addresses like orange.pufferfish12@simplelogin.com that forward any mail sent there to your personal inbox, effectively acting as a buffer between your personal email address and a service/newsletter that requires your email. Additionally you can reply to that alias address and it gets forwarded to whoever emailed you in the first place. You can also use your own custom domain name for your aliases like my.cool.alias@yourdomain.com. You can generate a unique email for everything you sign up to and that way you'll know exactly who leaked your email to a spammer (e.g, if a spammer emails orange.pufferfish12 and I set that alias up for my Amazon account then I know it was Amazon who leaked it). The bonus is you can delete the alias at any time to prevent anyone with that alias from reaching your inbox ever again.

Proton Mask (or Proton Alias, they're still deciding on the name) is what SimpleLogin will be rebranded to soon when it officially joins the Proton suite of tools. It will expand its capabilities from simple email aliasing to also include:

1) Credit/Debit Card Aliases. Basically email aliases for when you need to pay for something online. This is huge and I personally cannot wait for this to get built. Every time you need to give your card number to an online merchant you can generate a unique card number just for that site which you can disable at any time. Want to buy something from a site but you think the card number might be saved and leaked later? Just generate a virtual card number and delete it right after the purchase.

2) Phone Number Alias. Same deal, burner phone numbers that forward calls to your real number.

I think Proton Mask/Alias will be one of their best products once fully realized. They're at the beginning stages of development right now so the card number and phone number features are a little ways off.

 

[Mac_tech]

SimpleLogin is an email alias service that lets you generate unlimited alias email addresses for when you sign up to services, newsletters, etc. It's almost entirely similar to Apple's Hide My Email except SimpleLogin is an open source implementation (so you know exactly what's going on with your data), not tied to your Apple ID, and finally owned by a company with a long track record for protecting privacy: Proton.

Most people might have an email address like jim@wikipedia.com that they use all over the web for everything. The problem is many people that get your address abuse it by passing it off to spammers or if a service gets hacked bad actors can search the database for your email address and know that account belongs to you.

Email aliases let you generate unlimited random addresses like orange.pufferfish12@simplelogin.com that forward any mail sent there to your personal inbox, effectively acting as a buffer between your personal email address and a service/newsletter that requires your email. Additionally you can reply to that alias address and it gets forwarded to whoever emailed you in the first place. You can also use your own custom domain name for your aliases like my.cool.alias@yourdomain.com. You can generate a unique email for everything you sign up to and that way you'll know exactly who leaked your email to a spammer (e.g, if a spammer emails orange.pufferfish12 and I set that alias up for my Amazon account then I know it was Amazon who leaked it). The bonus is you can delete the alias at any time to prevent anyone with that alias from reaching your inbox ever again.

Proton Mask (or Proton Alias, they're still deciding on the name) is what SimpleLogin will be rebranded to soon when it officially joins the Proton suite of tools. It will expand its capabilities from simple email aliasing to also include:

1) Credit/Debit Card Aliases. Basically email aliases for when you need to pay for something online. This is huge and I personally cannot wait for this to get built. Every time you need to give your card number to an online merchant you can generate a unique card number just for that site which you can disable at any time. Want to buy something from a site but you think the card number might be saved and leaked later? Just generate a virtual card number and delete it right after the purchase.

2) Phone Number Alias. Same deal, burner phone numbers that forward calls to your real number.

I think Proton Mask/Alias will be one of their best products once fully realized. They're at the beginning stages of development right now so the card number and phone number features are a little ways off.

Thanks so much, I appreciate the detailed reply. Exciting stuff indeed.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

SimpleLogin is an email alias service that lets you generate unlimited alias email addresses for when you sign up to services, newsletters, etc. It's almost entirely similar to Apple's Hide My Email except SimpleLogin is an open source implementation (so you know exactly what's going on with your data), not tied to your Apple ID, and finally owned by a company with a long track record for protecting privacy: Proton.

Most people might have an email address like jim@wikipedia.com that they use all over the web for everything. The problem is many people that get your address abuse it by passing it off to spammers or if a service gets hacked bad actors can search the database for your email address and know that account belongs to you.

Email aliases let you generate unlimited random addresses like orange.pufferfish12@simplelogin.com that forward any mail sent there to your personal inbox, effectively acting as a buffer between your personal email address and a service/newsletter that requires your email. Additionally you can reply to that alias address and it gets forwarded to whoever emailed you in the first place. You can also use your own custom domain name for your aliases like my.cool.alias@yourdomain.com. You can generate a unique email for everything you sign up to and that way you'll know exactly who leaked your email to a spammer (e.g, if a spammer emails orange.pufferfish12 and I set that alias up for my Amazon account then I know it was Amazon who leaked it). The bonus is you can delete the alias at any time to prevent anyone with that alias from reaching your inbox ever again.

Proton Mask (or Proton Alias, they're still deciding on the name) is what SimpleLogin will be rebranded to soon when it officially joins the Proton suite of tools. It will expand its capabilities from simple email aliasing to also include:

1) Credit/Debit Card Aliases. Basically email aliases for when you need to pay for something online. This is huge and I personally cannot wait for this to get built. Every time you need to give your card number to an online merchant you can generate a unique card number just for that site which you can disable at any time. Want to buy something from a site but you think the card number might be saved and leaked later? Just generate a virtual card number and delete it right after the purchase.

2) Phone Number Alias. Same deal, burner phone numbers that forward calls to your real number.

I think Proton Mask/Alias will be one of their best products once fully realized. They're at the beginning stages of development right now so the card number and phone number features are a little ways off.

My bank has been doing that for a long time, one of the reasons I went with them. Its a great feature...But not one enabling anonymity...

 

[zakarhino]

My bank has been doing that for a long time, one of the reasons I went with them. Its a great feature...But not one enabling anonymity...

Yeah for me it's more about ensuring people don't get my card number because of some kind of hack.