Protonmail Complete Review by Team Cyber Suggest





Protonmail Complete Review by Team Cyber Suggest


For the public, stories that reveal special relationships that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have with the NSA, and other security services, only fuel their concerns that everything they do online is being read by others for nefarious purposes. ProtonMail is the supposed antidote to compromised email systems. An email service where all communications can be encrypted and messages can even self-destruct. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read this review and determine if ProtonMail is the answer to your privacy concerns or just an extra one.



           Create ProtonMail - Encrypted email account


Pricing and Features

ProtonMail has a free account with ‘limited features’ that includes 150 messages per day, 500MB of storage, and limited support. The first paid level is the Plus account costing $4.00 a month that allows you to send up to 1,000 emails a day, keep up to 5GB of emails in storage, have five email aliases and use your own domain name if required. There is also a business user tier where each employee billed at $6.25 per month to use the service.
Protonmail Complete Review by Team Cyber Suggest
Protonmail Complete Review by Team Cyber Suggest



If you’ve used Google Mail, Outlook.com, or anything similar then you’ll not find much about ProtonMail jarring, as it follows a very similar model. There is a recognizable Inbox, you can create folders for specific emails conversations to live, and there are filters to action on incoming emails, and so on. And, for most users, it might initially seem like there is little difference between this email and any other web-based solution. One more useful feature of the system is the ability to make emails self-destruct a specific time after they’ve been sent. We mention this ability because this is the exact feature that the infamous Cambridge Analytica used on ProtonMail to obfuscate its notorious activity in respect of harvested Facebook data and selling it on. However, it only takes one of the parties in these exchanges not to be a ProtonMail user or forward an email, and the game is up, should investigations occur. Given the example of Cambridge Analytics, that you are using ProtonMail will suggest that you’ve something to hide even if you’ve done nothing wrong, and having the system set up to send time-limited emails might only serve to enhance that impression to any law enforcement, should they investigate you. That might seem wildly unfair, but this is the world we live in.




Security

The entire purpose of ProtonMail is to be secure, although that does make some restrictions on how you and those you communicate with use it. Sending fully encrypted emails to those not using ProtonMail requires them to have the password as we previously mentioned, and if you intend to send regular emails, it is probably easier to get them a free account to use for the purpose.



Encrypted emails never travel or rest in an unencrypted form, and if you activate two-factor authentication, it should be reasonably safe from anyone guessing your password. Much kudos is given on the ProtonMail website of the physical server locations in Switzerland, and how that somehow emboldens them with the ability to resist the legal demands of other countries to provide access to email held on its system. Parallels are meant to be made, we assume, with the Swiss banking system, infamous for keeping the bank accounts of the worst regimes and their leaders from international authorities. However, the Swiss also have information exchange agreements with the likes of the USA, and in that respect, they’re duty-bound to hand over data in certain circumstances.




Performance

The performance of ProtonMail is generally good, and we were especially impressed with how rapidly it accepts attachments. What we easily can’t test is if the speed of the system reduces once you’ve got thousands of emails on it, although as you can only see a limited number of emails at any time, it should still be quick. Where it slows down is when you use it in preview panel mode, as each email needs to be decrypted as you highlight it to fill the panel with the contents. Being able to move back and forwards between a view with the panel and another with just the list is important if you have many emails to navigate through, and then click on the ones you need to read.


Conclusion

Despite some useful features, there are issues with ProtonMail, and we’re not just talking about bugs or other technical points. While researching this review, we found a significant number of free and paying customers with harsh things to say about the customer services side of this business. One especially worrying trend is customers who for no obvious reason have their accounts frozen. A scenario from which you have no appeal even it accused you of fraud or some other illegality. Once this happens, you can never access those emails again, and from what we understand ProtonMail deletes them all.

And for good measure, some paying customers have also accused them of billing irregularities. Any sizable business collects complaints. However, ProtonMail does seem to gather a very high proportion of them compared to accolades, and when multiple users make the same or similar complaints, it can’t be easily dismissed. Because of these concerns, and other performance issues, we find it difficult to recommend using this tool for a commercial purpose. We should also mention that if you install PGP on your computer, and on that of the person you wish to communicate securely, then you can use almost any email system and achieve similar results. And, that costs nothing.



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