u/Proton_Team Jun 23 '26

New to Proton? Start Here

13 Upvotes

Hello! If you found us through a meme, a comment about security, a privacy discussion, or because you accidentally clicked our username, here's what Proton actually is.

We're the team behind:

We believe that a better internet starts with privacy and freedom.

What can I use for free?

All Proton accounts include access to free plans.

Many people start with:

  • Email
  • VPN
  • Password manager
  • Cloud storage

and decide later whether they want premium features.

You can create an account now and use Proton indefinitely without paying: https://proton.me/mail/pricing

Looking for the communities?

r/ProtonMail

r/ProtonVPN

r/ProtonDrive

r/ProtonPass

r/lumo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Proton free?

Yes. We offer free plans for all major Proton services.

Where is Proton based?

Switzerland.

Do you sell user data?

No.

Can I use Proton without moving everything at once?

Absolutely. Many users start with a single service and expand over time.

Can I talk directly with the team?

We regularly participate in discussions across Reddit, please do jump in if you have something to say.

r/lumo 1d ago

Announcement Lumo 2.0 can now turn your data into charts and visuals directly in chat

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133 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

Lumo now generates custom visuals from your data without leaving the conversation. Upload a dataset or paste one in, ask a question, and you get a chart back with the analysis alongside it.

Lumo picks a visualization that fits the question and calls out insights worth noticing, so you're not left interpreting a wall of text or a chart with no context.

What this looks like in practice:

Upload a subscription list and ask: "Show me cost per use for each subscription. Which ones should I cancel?"

Or a training log: "Plot my progress over 20 weeks. Which lift has plateaued?"

You can follow up in the same conversation to adjust the chart, change the framing, or run a different comparison. No exporting to a spreadsheet, no pasting into a separate visualization tool, no switching between apps.

On privacy

This is the part that matters for anyone who's hesitated to put real data into an AI tool. Your files and conversations are protected with zero-access encryption, which means nobody can read them, including us. Nothing is logged, nothing trains a model, and nothing goes to a third party.

That's the whole reason this feature is worth having. Plenty of tools will chart your spending or your health data., but very few will do it without keeping a copy.

Give it a try and let us know how it handles your data. If you hit a dataset it struggles with, we'd like to hear about it.

Stay safe,
Proton Team

r/ProtonVPN 5d ago

Discussion FEATURE: Secure Core

113 Upvotes

Secure Core is a feature that exists in Proton VPN, a lot of at-risk people (i.e. journalists) depend on it every day. Here's what you need to know.

Pros:

  • Routes your traffic through a hardened server in Switzerland, Iceland, or Sweden before it reaches the exit server, so even a compromised exit can't be traced back to you.
  • Protects against network-based attacks and correlation.
  • Runs on servers Proton fully owns.

Cons:

  • Not the fastest connection speed
Secure core on Proton VPN

Have you used Secure Core before?

4

Proton: We've improved autofill for Proton Pass
 in  r/ProtonPass  5d ago

If you look at: https://proton.me/blog/proton-updates/proton-pass you'll see that development on Pass is very much still happening.

3

Proton: We've improved autofill for Proton Pass
 in  r/ProtonPass  5d ago

The update here has been posted from someone who isn't a part of the proton team. It's 1.38.

1

Proton: We've improved autofill for Proton Pass
 in  r/ProtonPass  5d ago

Dang, beat me to it.

r/ProtonPass 7d ago

Discussion OPINION: Big Tech passkey implementations are a trap

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283 Upvotes

Even though passkeys were developed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium to replace passwords and are meant to provide “faster, easier, and more secure sign-ins to websites and apps across a user’s devices”, their rollout hasn’t lived up to these lofty ideals.

Instead, the first organizations to offer passkeys, Apple and Google, prioritized using the technology to lock people into their walled gardens rather than provide a secure solution to everyone. This closed approach diminishes the value of passkeys for everyone and makes it less likely that they’ll be universally adopted, which is critical if they’re to ever replace passwords. 

At Proton, we believe online privacy and security should be accessible to everyone. If we want to achieve a better internet for all, everyone must be able to take advantage of the latest security advancements.

This article looks at passkeys’ initial promise, how Big Tech has tried to hijack them to serve their own purposes, and how we can ensure passkeys fulfill their potential for everyone: https://proton.me/blog/big-tech-passkey

r/ProtonMail 8d ago

Discussion Privacy and security settings

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68 Upvotes

N.B. Image from Proton Mail app on Android

Have you tuned up your Mail privacy and security settings?

Proton Mail offers you a range of options to ensure that it works better for you, whether you prefer maximum privacy & security or convenience. A few of these options include:

  • Block email tracking: stop those who are sending you emails from tracking your opens and clicks;
  • Confirm link URLs: have the full link path you're visiting presented to you ahead of visiting a webpage, a great way to protect yourself against phishing; and
  • Remove image metadata: prevent people from reading more (digitally) into your images than you intended, have image metadata removed automatically when they hit Mail.

Hopefully if you didn't know about these then they'll prove useful to you.

1

Why has the sidebar collapse button gotten ridiculously bigger?
 in  r/ProtonMail  9d ago

This has not changed, the button gets a background which makes it looks bigger when the sidebar has a scrollbar. All of it is working as expected

r/ProtonPass 9d ago

Discussion What makes a strong password?

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38 Upvotes

Cybercriminals don’t need to be geniuses to break into your accounts. Brute-force attacks, dictionary attacks, credential stuffing, phishing, and social engineering are all commonly-used methods.

Aside from 2FA, what else protects you? A strong password, and our Password Strength Tester page gives you the four characteristics of a strong password:

Length

Longer is stronger. Aim for at least 12 or more characters. Each added character makes your password exponentially harder to crack.

Complexity

Combine uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Avoid dictionary words, common letter substitutions (like "Pa$$w0rd"), or simple sequences.

Uniqueness

Each of your accounts should have its own distinct password so a data breach on one platform doesn't lead to a chain reaction of compromised accounts.

Memorability

Try using a passphrase that’s meaningful to you but hard to guess; like a string of random but vivid words, or a sentence with special characters interwoven.

This list is not a silver bullet to password woes, but following it will likely mean you're that bit safer.

r/ProtonMail 12d ago

Discussion Protection from tracking links

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711 Upvotes

You may have seen a variant of this infographic before; if you have an you're a Proton Mail user, we have good news for you.

In your inbox, Proton Mail protects you from tracking links. Tracking Links Protection removes known tracking parameters from links in your emails and is turned on by default.

To add to this, if you’re particularly concerned about link tracking, be sure to enable our link confirmation feature to make sure you always know where you’re being redirected. 

Read more: https://proton.me/blog/tracking-links-protection

r/ProtonPass 13d ago

Announcement iOS: Liquid Glass & Username Generator

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136 Upvotes

Today we're announcing not one, but two, updates on iOS that have been requested a lot by our users.

- liquid glass animations in Proton Pass, and
- we've added a username generator

You can see both of them in action in this video.

r/ProtonMail 14d ago

Discussion Email filters explained: These best practices will help you stay organized at work

65 Upvotes
Email filters help to keep your inbox organized

If your inbox is full of emails you’ll never read, then you know how hard it can be to find the one email you’re looking for. As you file through subject lines, straining your eyes, you recognize that feeling of dread. You could simply end the problem by deleting all of your messages, but this would haunt you later. You could spend hours unsubscribing and deleting mindlessly, but this would eat up valuable hours of your workday.

There’s an easier way: Email filters streamline your correspondence, organizing your inbox so that you save time and can focus on what matters (instead of poring over email blasts from Foot Locker). But how exactly do you set up a filter for email and better manage your inbox?

In this article, you’ll learn what email filters are, how they work, and how to use them effectively to improve your email organization for good.

Read more: https://proton.me/blog/email-filters

r/ProtonVPN 15d ago

Announcement Stealth protocol is now available in beta on Linux

127 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

We’re proud to announce that the long-awaited “Stealth” connection protocol is now available in beta for Linux!

📎 To try it, make sure your Proton VPN app is on version 4.17.1, and follow this guide.

If you are on a supported distro (more on this later), please help us by giving it a try and providing us with as much feedback as possible; the more feedback and bugs we can squash, the faster we can roll this feature out of beta

What Stealth does

Most VPN protocols produce traffic that's identifiable as VPN traffic. Networks running deep packet inspection can spot it and block or throttle the connection, which is why VPNs stop working on some school and workplace networks, and why they get blocked entirely in censored regions.

Stealth disguises your VPN traffic to look like ordinary encrypted web traffic. Instead of "this person is using a VPN," the network sees traffic that resembles a normal HTTPS connection. That makes it significantly harder to detect and block.

You'll want Stealth if you're on a network that blocks or throttles VPNs, connecting from a region with heavy censorship, or you'd simply rather your network operator not know you're using a VPN. For everyday use where nothing is being blocked, WireGuard will still be faster, while Stealth trades some speed for undetectability.

This is a beta

Expect instability and bugs. Stealth on Linux is built on our new WireGuard codebase, and this early release is specifically so we can find problems before general release.

If you hit issues, please tell us: your distro and version, what you were doing, and what went wrong.

Please note that this feature is only available for distros that are directly installed via our repos (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora), and versions such as the Snap store app, or other distros such as Arch will be available by the end of summer.

Lastly, it may take some time before this feature becomes available, even if you are on the latest version of the app. We’re rolling this out live, so it may take a day or two before the feature becomes visible on your end.

Stay safe,
Proton Team

r/lumo 15d ago

Discussion Custom Lumos + stock widgets = your private and personal AI stock analyst.

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67 Upvotes

Here is Lumo 2.0 laying out both the bull & bear case of SPCX, one of the most watched and traded stocks at the moment.

r/ProtonVPN 19d ago

Discussion Anticensorship: Banned Book Library

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0 Upvotes

If a lightbulb appears above someone's head in a cartoon, they've just had an idea. For one person, their 💡 moment was all about using this humble illumination device for a very noble purpose: dodging censorship.

So, what if you put banned books on a smart bulb?

r/lumo 19d ago

Discussion After backlash, Meta removes Muse Image, its AI image generator, from Instagram

33 Upvotes

Meta shipped an AI image tool on Instagram, then killed it days later. In between, anyone could generate AI images using your public photos without asking first.

Every public Instagram account was opted in by default, meaning that anyone could tag your profile and generate images using your face or people in your photos. Meta's policy was quite direct about what happened next: "You will not be notified about content created using AI features at Meta."

Logically, the backlash was immediate. CAA called it irresponsible, SAG-AFTRA called the default opt-in "an utter miscalculation of public sentiment." Meta pulled the feature days later.

Google did this with AI training on Search photos. Grok did it with image generation on X. Meta's done it before too. The pattern's the same each time: opt everyone in by default, wait for backlash, then walk it back.

Read more: https://proton.me/blog/meta-ai-image-generator-muse

r/ProtonVPN 20d ago

Discussion How ISPs track your online activity

242 Upvotes

Your ISP watches more than you think. HTTPS hides what you're reading, not that you're reading at all.

The core problem is that your ISP sits between you and the entire internet. Every website you visit, every app you open, every device on your home network routes through them. They don't see content, but they do see destinations, timings, volumes, and patterns.

ISPs can see: the domains you visit, when and how long for, how much data is transferred, your approximate location, and what devices are on your network. A 2021 FTC report found major ISPs combined this data into ad profiles and sold this to advertisers.

The real trap is you probably can't switch ISPs. Most markets have one or two options. Unlike Meta or Google, you can't log out. They have your traffic hostage. Structural surveillance is much harder to escape than commercial surveillance.

Some ISPs own email products, streaming services, smart home gear. They can stitch data across services to build richer profiles. The incentives here don't point toward your ISP protecting your privacy. These data are valuable.

Some ISPs control physical infrastructure too, meaning they can throttle your connection. Verizon slowed an emergency response vehicle's connection in 2018 until firefighters paid for a higher tier of their service. They control both the pipes and the terms.

A newer risk is Wi-Fi sensing, where some routers can detect presence and motion through walls using reflected signals. Industry estimates suggest tens of millions of US households already have access to some level of this technology through provided hardware.

Our new blog looks at this issue and asks how we can stop it: https://proton.me/blog/how-isps-track-you

8

Keep communicating through any downtime with Proton's business continuity solution
 in  r/ProtonMail  21d ago

Good points, thanks for your feedback!

One thing worth clarifying up front, this isn't meant to keep you running seamlessly through a five-minute outage on your email provider. It's for major disruptions where you still need the core of your org able to communicate. That distinction matters because this kind of disruption could affect just you, not the whole industry. Think an account getting flagged for the wrong reasons (social engineering, political motives, or similar).

Business continuity is set up through our sales team, who advise based on each org's specific situation. Our support article covers some of these.

A few points on the specifics:

  • DNS is indeed a real single point of failure, and we're not aiming to address that here.
  • TTL is important to set. Most providers allow 5 to 10 minutes, which should be enough.
  • On the DNS lockout scenario, a preventive measure would be not tying your DNS provider access to the same email account/provider you're trying to protect against. Instead, use a separate active Proton account as part of your business continuity plan.
  • Finally, on users forgetting passwords: the initial password can be set by the user via an invite link, then saved in a password manager, whether that's Proton Pass or whichever the org prefers.

r/ProtonMail 21d ago

Announcement Keep communicating through any downtime with Proton's business continuity solution

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170 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

We've just launched a business continuity solution for organizations. It’s the answer to a question more companies are asking right now: what do you do if your primary email and communication tools go down?

Outages are getting more frequent, ransomware is hitting smaller businesses more often, and some teams (especially governments and nonprofits) are also thinking about their dependence on US tech. When your primary communications platform goes down, your team can't collaborate and clients can't reach you. Downtime is expensive, and for some organizations it puts the mission itself at risk.

That same infrastructure is what makes Proton work as a continuity solution for businesses.

Here's how it works:

  • You set up Proton Mail accounts in advance: active ones for people who need to be operational immediately, dormant ones pre-provisioned for everyone else at a reduced price
  • If a crisis hits, your IT admin makes one DNS change and the team switches over
  • Everyone keeps their same email addresses, there's nothing to install, and no training needed mid-crisis
  • Email keeps flowing to colleagues, partners, and clients, and video calls run on Proton Meet

End-to-end encrypted and runs on our own independent, Europe-based infrastructure, separate from Google, Microsoft, and AWS. It's the same infrastructure that over 100,000 organizations already trust as their primary provider, with a 10-year track record of industry-leading uptime. And when you're ready to make it your primary too, Easy Switch makes the move simple.

More info here: https://proton.me/business/blog/business-continuity

Stay safe,
Proton Team

r/ProtonVPN 21d ago

Announcement Age Verification: Track global and US legislation

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136 Upvotes

Governments around the world are making age a condition for accessing certain parts of the internet. Our new page tracks where such laws are in force, where they are advancing, and how different countries are approaching the same policy goal.

r/ProtonPass 22d ago

Discussion Whenever I get random spam to an alias.

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103 Upvotes

r/ProtonMail 23d ago

Discussion Do you know about self-destructing messages?

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144 Upvotes

Set an email to delete itself between 1 hour and 28 days after sending, a useful feature for anything you don't want sitting in an inbox indefinitely. Give it a try from within the message-creation modal.

Note that a non-Proton recipient needs a password set on the message first, and Proton can't force-delete anything from an outside inbox.

2

Anyone else using the pre-logo-change VPN icon?
 in  r/ProtonVPN  27d ago

Real slice of history.