Proton Technologies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Proton
FormerlyProtonMail
FoundedMay 16, 2014; 7 years ago (2014-05-16) in Geneva, Switzerland
Headquarters
Geneva
,
Switzerland
Key people
  • Andy Yen (CEO/Founder)
  • Bart Butler (CTO)
  • Varun Kabra (CMO)[1]
Products
Websiteprotonmail.com

Proton Technologies AG is a Swiss technology company originally founded as ProtonMail on 16 May 2014 by a group of scientists who met at CERN.[2][3] Proton is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.[4][5]

ProtonMail released ProtonVPN in 2017, becoming Proton Technologies. In January 2020, ProtonVPN became fully open source.[6][7][8]

Products[]

ProtonMail[]

ProtonMail was released publicly on 16 May 2014 into beta[9] as an end-to-end encrypted email service after a year of crowdfunding. ProtonMail 2.0 was released 14 August 2015, with a rewritten codebase, and becoming open source.[10]

ProtonMail and ProtonVPN[]

On 22 May 2017, upon the release of ProtonVPN, ProtonMail became Proton Technologies, with ProtonMail becoming a subsidiary alongside ProtonVPN. It is accessible online through Tor, the clearnet, and its mobile applications.

After over a year of crowdfunding, ProtonMail released ProtonVPN on 22 May 2017; a secure VPN service provider.[11] Simultaneously, ProtonMail became Proton Technologies AG. It has an alleged no-logging policy, location in Switzerland, and of DNS and WebRTC IP address leakage prevention.

On 21 January 2020, Proton Technologies announced that ProtonVPN would now be open source, to allow independent security experts to analyze it, becoming the first VPN service to do so, simultaneously announcing that an independent security audit had been conducted.[12][13]

As of 25 April 2021, ProtonVPN has a total of 1238 servers, located in 55 different countries, all owned and operated by Proton.[14][15]

ProtonCalendar[]

Released for public beta on 30 December 2019, is a fully encrypted calendar app. As of 14 April 2021, it is available to all users of ProtonMail.[16][17][18]

ProtonDrive (beta)[]

Released for public beta on 16 November 2020, is a cloud storage solution with end-to-end encryption. As of 17 June 2021, it is only available to paid subscribers of ProtonMail.[19]

Location and security[]

Both ProtonMail and ProtonVPN are located in Switzerland to avoid any surveillance[20] or information requests from countries under the Fourteen Eyes, and/or under government surveillance laws like the U.S.'s Patriot Act or outside the bounds of law.

They are also located in Switzerland because of its strict privacy laws.[21]

Data centers[]

Architecture of a ProtonMail data center.

ProtonMail maintains and owns its own server hardware and network in order to avoid utilizing a third party. It maintains two data centers, one in Lausanne and another in Attinghausen (in the former K7 military bunker under 1,000 meters (3,300 ft) of granite rock) as a backup.[22][23][24] Since the data centers are located in Switzerland, they are legally outside of US and EU jurisdiction. Under Swiss law, all surveillance requests from foreign countries must go through a Swiss court and are subject to international treaties. Prospective surveillance targets are promptly notified and can appeal the request in court.[citation needed][25]

Each data center uses load balancing across web, mail, and SQL servers, redundant power supply, hard drives with full disk encryption, and exclusive use of Linux and other open-source software.[26] In December 2014, ProtonMail joined the RIPE NCC in an effort to have more direct control over the surrounding Internet infrastructure.[27]

Funding[]

Proton Technologies was initially funded through crowdfunding and now through paid subscriptions to its services,[28] but it's also partially funded by FONGIT[29][30]("Fondation Genevoise pour l'Innovation Technologique"'; in English the "Foundation for Technological Innovation"); a non-profit foundation, which itself is financed through the ,[31] a division of the Swiss government. In March 2021, Proton confirmed that the shares held by Charles Rivers Ventures had been transferred to FONGIT.[32]

References[]

  1. ^ "About ProtonMail".
  2. ^ O'Luanaigh, Cian (23 May 2014). "CERN inspires entrepreneurs for email encryption". CERN. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  3. ^ "About ProtonMail". ProtonMail. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  4. ^ "Why Protonmail is in Switzerland? An Analysis of Swiss Privacy Laws". ProtonMail Blog. 19 May 2014. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  5. ^ "ProtonVPN Review: A Secure VPN Or Seriously Overhyped?". Restore Privacy. 10 December 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  6. ^ "ProtonVPN goes open source to build trust". BetaNews. 21 January 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  7. ^ January 2020, Paul Wagenseil 27. "ProtonVPN goes open-source: What this means for your privacy". Tom's Guide. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  8. ^ Prakash, Abhishek. "ProtonVPN Applications are Now 100% Open Source - It's FOSS". ItsFOSS. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  9. ^ "ProtonMail, the Easy-to-Use Encrypted Email Service, Opens Up to the Public". 17 March 2016.
  10. ^ Admin (13 August 2015). "ProtonMail goes Open Source with version 2.0". ProtonMail Blog. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  11. ^ "ProtonVPN - About Us". ProtonVPN. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  12. ^ Osborne, Charlie. "ProtonVPN apps handed to open source community in transparency push". ZDNet. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  13. ^ "ProtonVPN goes open source to build trust". BetaNews. 21 January 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  14. ^ "ProtonVPN - Stats". ProtonVPN. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  15. ^ May 2020, Mike Williams 21. "ProtonVPN review". TechRadar. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  16. ^ "The ProtonCalendar beta is available now!". ProtonMail Blog. 30 December 2019. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  17. ^ Schiffer, Zoe (1 January 2020). "ProtonMail just added an encrypted calendar to its encrypted Gmail competitor". The Verge. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  18. ^ "Everyone can stay on top of their schedule with Proton Calendar beta". ProtonMail Blog. 14 April 2021. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  19. ^ "Proton Drive encrypted cloud storage is available in beta". ProtonMail Blog. 16 November 2020. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  20. ^ "ProtonMail launched ProtonVPN as a secure and free VPN service". ProtonVPN Blog. 20 June 2017. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  21. ^ ProtonVPN. "About Us". About ProtonVPN.
  22. ^ "ProtonMail Security Details". ProtonMail Security. 31 January 2016. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  23. ^ Patterson, Dan (13 November 2015). "Exclusive: Inside the ProtonMail siege: how two small companies fought off one of Europe's largest DDoS attacks". TechRepublic. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  24. ^ "Im geheimen Datenbunker von Attinghausen". Schweiz aktuell (video) (in German). SRF. 5 September 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  25. ^ "Extradition: Switzerland".
  26. ^ Yen, Andy (17 December 2014). "Infrastructure Upgrades". ProtonMail Blog. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  27. ^ Yen, Andy (17 December 2014). "ProtonMail joins Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE NCC)". ProtonMail Blog. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  28. ^ Andy Yen (8 March 2019). "We have been awarded €2 million from the EU to further develop the Proton ecosystem". ProtonMail Blog. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  29. ^ Team, Proton (18 March 2015). "ProtonMail Raises $2M USD to Take Encrypted Communications Mainstream". ProtonMail Blog. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  30. ^ "Protonmail's Crowdfunding & Equity Sale". Privacy Watchdog. 23 September 2019. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  31. ^ "About Us". Fongit. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  32. ^ "CRV divestment and partnering with the community". ProtonMail. 26 March 2021. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
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