Google likes to email regularly to tell me where I have been and it is usually pretty accurate. With our phones on, we can be tracked pretty much everywhere we go.
Along with tracking our movements, everything we look at online is also tracked and recorded and used by google and other companies for their own benefit. Even if we try to opt out, they find ways around it.
All our emails are also monitored and tracked for selling things to us. If I am thinking of buying a new phone, suddenly I am getting phone adverts showing everywhere I browse. Gmail is probably one of the best and most popular email services, but who knows what they do with our data and who they give access to. It is a web2 service, so we don't even own the account.
Your account also needs to be secure, as email is often used to verify your access to other accounts and services you use. I have noticed over the years how much the security has improved for this. To log in to your account from a different IP address usually requires 2FA to get in, which is good for your protection.
Proton Mail source
However, Google is not interested in your privacy and there are no encryption of your emails and therefore is switching to a service like Proton worth it?
With Proton, you need to protect the access to your account AND your data. This is because when they store your mails, they are encrypted and only you can decrypt them, so you need to not lose your password as you could also lose access to your mail history.
Proton also offer end to end encrypted emails if you send to other proton users, which could be good to recommend also family members to use it, otherwise you need to setup pgp or agree on a password for them to decrypt your emails. There is an instruction how that works here.
So far I have been testing out the service and find it really good to use. There is also an App which is pretty user friendly. You can also link it to your gmail account, but im not sure you really need to.
I do miss some of the gmail features that I like and with Gmail you can use alias variations of your email address for registering accounts etc, so you can tell exactly if you have had a data breach from a certain website, which comes in handy and doesn't put your mail email address on hundreds of websites.
Proton Paid Plans source
There is a free account which is perfectly useable, but they do have some upgradable options that come with some extra benefits, but €10 a month seems quite abit for an email service, but if security is really important to you, maybe it is worth it.
Summary
With the launch of CBDCs and rampant promotion of scammers on web2, it can make sense to consider your privacy more and look to try and protect your data. A little pre-thought now could pay dividends later if you have some problems.
I really like the idea of having my emails encrypted, but wonder if the login could be done through a private key that would be more secure than a standard username password that is currently used. (Yes there is a solution to this which I will cover in a future post).
I am not so much in the habit of sending encrypted emails, but with our data being sold and used by companies and governments to sell us things or monitor our activities, it is something I am taking more of an interest in.
Have you used Proton Mail?
Thanks for reading.
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