Worth it Stage 1
Proton Mail was built by CERN researchers after Snowden, with end-to-end encryption so strong that Proton itself cannot read your emails. Run by the Proton Foundation in Geneva, it has no ad business and no incentive to monetise user data. The free tier is funded by paid subscribers. The 2021 IP-address disclosure under Swiss law was a reminder that no tool is immune to legal orders—but that is a structural constraint of operating legally, not extraction. Expanding into Drive, VPN, and Calendar creates ecosystem risk to watch, but rated stage 1 on current email behaviour.
The promise
Its first promise, and how much is kept · Scoring
100% kept
“End-to-end encrypted email, based in Switzerland.”
Why it’s rated 1
The criteria it meets, with sources · Method
- Alignment 2 of 3
-
- A1 Paid for without surveillance
- A2 Nonprofit or community-run
- Lock-in 0 of 4
- None
- Extraction 0 of 7
- None
- Decline 0 of 3
- None
Result An alignment criterion, no lock-in, and at most one extraction criterion, so stage 1.
News signals
Sourced reporting, tagged by strategy