Let’s face it – the NSA is not exactly in the good books of many people ever since their secrets were leaked out, not to mention being the butt of close-to-home jokes, where it even accessed information from the likes of Google and Yahoo! among others. If there is one particular rule of thumb that all should subscribe to, it would be this – using your smartphone, tablet or computer to go online always leaves you with a chance of having your privacy compromised. Perhaps the launch of ProtonMail in public beta might change that perspective.
ProtonMail is the brainchild of a small team of developers as well as system administrators from MIT, Harvard, CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), and other institutions. First founded last year, ProtonMail was developed in a private beta environment, where the team had to look into the likes of encryption and other security protocols in order to ensure that such a service remains as private as possible.
First things first – how can ProtonMail be so secure? First of all, it has been incorporated in Switzerland, a place where privacy laws for individuals and businesses are known to be extremely strong. Throw in end-to-end encryption, dual authentication, alongside segregated authentication and encryption, and you’re more or less there. Even ProtonMail claims that they are unable to get to your data, which means should you forget your decryption password, that’s that. There is also the self-destruction of messages, which one can set an expiration time, making me wonder whether those who would want to cheat on their spouses might see ProtonMail to be useful.
Free ProtonMail accounts provide 100MB of storage and 500 messages each month, while paid options will arrive down the road. [Press Release]
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