Proton Mail

Is Proton Mail safe?

Yes. Proton Mail is a strong choice for people who want an inbox that its own provider cannot read. Message bodies and attachments are stored with zero-access encryption, the app has no ads, and Apple's privacy label lists only crash data, not linked to you. We score it 85/100.

The catch is that encryption covers content, not everything around it. Subject lines and who wrote to whom are not end-to-end encryptedEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary, and Proton is a Swiss company that must obey Swiss court orders. Twice those orders have helped police identify activists.

What Proton can and cannot see

Proton's own help page draws the line clearly. Bodies and attachments in your mailbox are stored end-to-end encryptedEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary, and mail between two Proton addresses is encrypted on your device before it is sent. Subject lines are not, "to remain compliant with standards", and sender and recipient addresses are encrypted at rest but not end to end. Proton says it would need an order approved by a Swiss judge to access them.

Mail to anyone outside Proton travels with TLS, the same transport encryption Gmail uses, and the recipient's provider can then read it. Proton's password-protected messages are the workaround for sensitive mail to non-Proton contacts.

The business model helps. Proton is paid for by subscriptions, has no venture capital investors, and since June 2024 its main shareholder is the Proton Foundation, a Swiss non-profit that can block a sale of the company.

When Proton hands data to the police

This is where Proton differs from Signal, which keeps almost nothing to give. Proton publishes its numbers. In 2025 it received 9,301 legal orders for Proton Mail, contested 988 and complied with 8,313. In 2017 it received 26.

Two cases show what "complied" can mean:

• France, 2021. French police, working through Europol according to press reports, sought a member of Youth for Climate in Paris. Proton received a binding Swiss order and logged the account's IP address and device details and said there was "no possibility to appeal this particular request". The person was arrested. Proton then changed its privacy policy wording and now advises users with high privacy needs to connect through its Tor onion site.
• Spain, 2024. According to The Register, Spain's Guardia Civil, through Swiss police, obtained the recovery email address on a Proton account in a terrorism inquiry. It was an iCloud address, and Apple then supplied identifying details.

By default Proton keeps no permanent IP logs and login logging is off. That changes once a Swiss order names your account.

Is Swiss privacy law still a protection?

Less than it was. In October 2021 Proton won a Swiss court ruling that email services are not telecom providers, which spared it the data retention duties phone companies face. A proposed revision of the Swiss surveillance ordinance (VÜPF) would push the other way. As reported by heise in August 2025, services with 5,000 or more users would have to store IP addresses and port numbers for six months, help decrypt content and identify users. Proton responded by moving most of its physical infrastructure to Germany and Norway, starting with its Lumo chatbot. The rule was still a proposal when we checked, and the company remains incorporated in Geneva.

How secure is the account itself?

Proton's apps are open source, it links to independent audit reports for Mail, Drive, VPN and its crypto libraries, and it pays up to USD 100,000 for serious bugs. We found no breach of Proton Mail accounts in Have I Been Pwned or in company notices.

The weak link is the same as with any email account: phishing. Proton's free sign-up asks for little identity information, which also makes it attractive to scammers sending fraud from proton.me addresses. Do not trust a message just because it came from an encrypted service.

How to use Proton Mail more privately

1. Think before adding a recovery email or phone number. They help you get back into the account, but in the Spanish case the recovery address is what identified the user. A securely stored recovery phraseSeed phraseA list of 12 to 24 words that can restore a crypto wallet and all its funds. Anyone who has it controls the wallet.More in the glossary avoids that link.
2. Turn on two-factor authenticationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary with an authenticator app or security key.
3. Keep sensitive details out of subject lines, since they are not end-to-end encryptedEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary.
4. For mail to people outside Proton, use password-protected messages and share the password another way.
5. If your threat is a state authority, connect through Tor or a VPN so Proton has no real IP address to log if ordered to.

How we scored it

Proton Mail scores well on privacy (86), security (86) and control (88), and we found no regulatory fines (95). Its lowest factor is scams and harmful content (70), because phishing reaches every inbox and Proton addresses are used to send it. The gap to Signal is metadata: Proton can be made to log or hand over account details, and it has done so.