Proton Mail

Proton Mail
Screenshot of the Proton Mail website, showing the conversation view of a message in a user's inbox
Available inEnglish, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, Ukrainian
Headquarters
Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland[1]
OwnerProton AG
URLproton.me/mail
CommercialNo
RegistrationRequired
Users100 million (April 2023)[2]
LaunchedMay 16, 2014; 10 years ago (2014-05-16)
Current statusOnline
Web Client
Repositorygithub.com/ProtonMail
Written inTypeScript and Go
LicenseGNU GPLv3[3][4][5][6]
Website

Proton Mail (previously written as ProtonMail) is a Swiss end-to-end encrypted email service founded in 2013 headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland.[7] It uses client-side encryption to protect email content and user data before they are sent to Proton Mail servers, unlike other common email providers such as Gmail and Outlook.com.[8] The service can be accessed through a webmail client, the Tor network, Windows, macOS and Linux (beta) desktop apps[9] and iOS and Android apps.[10]

Proton Mail is run by Proton AG (formerly Proton Technologies), which is based in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland.[1] The company also operates Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Calendar and Proton Pass. Proton Mail received initial funding through a crowdfunding campaign. Although the default account setup is free, the service is sustained by optional paid services. Initial membership was by invitation only; however, beginning in March 2016, Proton Mail was opened to the public. Acquiring more than two million users by 2017,[11] membership grew to almost 70 million by 2022.[12]

  1. ^ a b "Privacy policy". Archived from the original on September 5, 2021. Retrieved May 28, 2022.
  2. ^ Yen (April 18, 2023). "There are now over 100 million Proton Accounts". proton.me. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved December 18, 2023.
  3. ^ "iOS mobile app repository". github.com/ProtonMail/ios-mail. Proton AG. Archived from the original on November 1, 2019. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  4. ^ "Android mobile app repository". github.com/ProtonMail/android-mail. Proton AG. Archived from the original on May 26, 2024. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  5. ^ "Proton bridge repository". github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge. Proton AG. Archived from the original on April 17, 2020. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  6. ^ "LICENSE". github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient. Proton AG. December 25, 2021. Archived from the original on December 25, 2021. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  7. ^ O'Luanaigh, Cian (May 23, 2014). "CERN inspires entrepreneurs for email encryption". CERN. Archived from the original on May 16, 2020. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  8. ^ Saxena, Kumkum; Rajdev, Dev; Bhatia, Divesh; Bahl, Manav (June 25–27, 2021). "ProtonMail: Advance Encryption and Security". 2021 International Conference on Communication information and Computing Technology (ICCICT). pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/ICCICT50803.2021.9510041. ISBN 978-1-6654-0430-3. S2CID 237000409.
  9. ^ "Introducing the Proton Mail desktop app". Proton. March 14, 2024. Archived from the original on April 1, 2024. Retrieved April 1, 2024.
  10. ^ "ProtonMail, the Easy-to-Use Encrypted Email Service, Opens Up to the Public". March 17, 2016. Archived from the original on July 2, 2016. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  11. ^ "Fighting Censorship with Proton Mail Encrypted Email Over Tor". Proton Mail Blog. January 19, 2017. Archived from the original on May 28, 2022. Retrieved January 20, 2017.
  12. ^ Edelman, Gilad (May 25, 2022). "Proton Is Trying to Become Google—Without Your Data". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on September 30, 2023. Retrieved May 27, 2022.