Every audit on this blog ends the same way: encryption at rest is not end-to-end encryption, and if a vendor holds your keys, your data is one policy, subpoena, or breach away from being someone else's reading material. We apply that test to Google Keep, OneNote, Notion, Apple Notes, and to Scrib itself.
Readers keep asking the natural next question: fine, my notes are locked down, what about everything else? Your email holds password resets, contracts, medical letters, and twenty years of correspondence. If your notes are encrypted but your inbox is not, you have locked the shed and left the house open.
This page is the answer we give, and it names one company more than any other: Proton. Here is exactly why, held to the same standard as every audit here, caveats included.
The Test, Applied to Email
Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail all encrypt your mail in transit and at rest, and all three hold the keys. Same pattern as the notes apps: the vendor can read the content, legal process reaches it, and with Gmail your inbox also feeds the profile that follows you around the internet. Google stopped scanning Gmail for ad personalization years ago, but the account linkage and metadata mining remain the business model.
Proton Mail is built the other way around:
| Question | Gmail / Outlook | Proton Mail |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds the keys | The vendor | You (zero-access storage) |
| Vendor can read stored mail | Yes, technically | No, message bodies are zero-access encrypted |
| End-to-end encryption | No | Yes, between Proton users (and via password-protected mail to others) |
| Business model | Ads and ecosystem data | Paid subscriptions |
| Open source clients | No | Yes, independently audited |
| Jurisdiction | United States | Switzerland |
That first row is the entire philosophy of this site, applied to the inbox.
Who Proton Actually Is
Proton was founded in Geneva in 2014 by scientists who met at CERN, launched through a crowdfunding campaign by people who wanted exactly this product to exist. A decade later it runs email, VPN, password manager, cloud storage, and calendar for tens of millions of accounts, and it has never run on advertising.
The structural fact we weigh most heavily: in 2024, control of Proton moved to the nonprofit Proton Foundation. A privacy company's biggest long-term risk is acquisition, the fate that reshaped Evernote. A foundation-controlled company cannot be quietly bought and repurposed the way a venture-backed startup can. Combined with open source clients, independent audits, and annual transparency reports, you get something rare: privacy claims you can verify structurally instead of taking on faith.
The Products, Briefly and Honestly
Proton Mail. The flagship. Zero-access storage for everything, end-to-end encryption between Proton users, password-protected messages to everyone else, aliases, and a clean modern client. The free tier is a real mailbox, not a demo. This is the single highest-impact privacy upgrade most people can make in an afternoon.
Proton VPN. Audited no-logs policy, open source apps, and a free tier with unlimited data, which almost no honest free VPN offers. One plain-speaking note: a VPN moves trust from your ISP to the VPN operator, it does not make you anonymous. That trust transfer only makes sense toward an operator with Proton's structure; it is why this is the only VPN we name.
Proton Pass. End-to-end encrypted password manager with unlimited logins on the free tier and built-in email aliasing. We have recommended Bitwarden across this site for years and still do; Pass is the pick if you want everything under one account. Either one gets your passwords out of your notes app, which is the actual emergency.
Proton Drive. End-to-end encrypted file storage. The complement to a local-first setup: Scrib keeps notes off every cloud; when something genuinely must live in one, encrypted-before-upload is the standard it should meet.
The Honest Caveats
No audit page on this site gets to skip this section, including the one about a company we like.
- Email metadata is not end-to-end encrypted. Subject lines, sender and recipient addresses, and timestamps are protected at rest but not E2E, because the email protocol itself requires them in the clear for routing. Proton minimizes what email leaks; nothing can eliminate it.
- Mail from outside arrives readable. A message from a Gmail user crossed the internet before Proton encrypted it at rest. E2E applies between Proton users or via password-protected messages.
- Swiss jurisdiction is a legal system, not a force field. In 2021, a Swiss court order compelled Proton to begin logging the IP address of a specific account belonging to a French activist. Proton could not and did not hand over message content, but the case is the permanent reminder: lawful orders bind every company somewhere, and encryption protects content, not connection metadata. Proton publishes these numbers in its transparency reports, which is exactly what we want to see.
- Convenience costs exist. Desktop IMAP clients need the Proton Bridge app, custom domains are paid, and search inside encrypted mail is more limited than Gmail's, because Proton cannot read your mail to index it server-side. That inconvenience is the encryption working.
If those caveats are dealbreakers, the honest alternative is not Gmail, it is Tuta or another E2E provider with different trade-offs. If they are acceptable, Proton is the strongest mainstream-usable option we know of.
How This Page Makes Money, Since We Audit Everyone Else
Scrib's site runs no ads, no analytics, and no trackers, and the apps are free. Links to Proton on this page may be referral links: if you subscribe to a paid Proton plan through one, Scrib may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Proton did not review, request, or pay for this article, and the recommendation predates any referral relationship. The caveats section above is the proof of independence: paid placements do not usually document the court orders.
If you were going to try Proton anyway, using these links is the way to support an independent, no-tracking site. If you were not, nothing on this page changes.
Where Scrib Fits
The private setup this site actually believes in has two halves. Things that must sync and reach other people (email, files you share, passwords across devices) belong with a vendor that encrypts end-to-end and cannot read them: that is Proton's half. Things that never needed a server at all belong on your device with no account and no cloud: that is Scrib's half, AES-256 on-device notes on Android, and Scrib Desktop's encrypted files on Windows. No subscription required for ours.
Common Questions
Is Proton Mail really private?
More private than any mainstream provider, with real limits. Mail between Proton users is end-to-end encrypted, and everything in your mailbox sits under zero-access encryption, meaning Proton cannot read stored message bodies. The limits: subject lines and routing metadata are not end-to-end encrypted, and a message arriving from Gmail crossed the internet unencrypted before Proton encrypted it at rest. Email as a protocol leaks metadata; Proton minimizes that, it cannot eliminate it.
Is Proton trustworthy?
By the checkable measures, yes. The apps are open source and independently audited, the company has operated since 2014 under Swiss law, it publishes transparency reports, and in 2024 control moved to the nonprofit Proton Foundation, which cannot be bought out the way a startup can. Trust the structure, not the marketing: Proton is paid by subscribers rather than advertisers, so its incentive is to protect data, not to mine it.
Is Proton free?
Every core product has a genuinely usable free tier: Proton Mail with a modest storage cap, Proton VPN with unlimited data on a small set of servers, which is rare among free VPNs, Proton Pass with unlimited passwords, and Proton Drive with a small encrypted storage allowance. Paid plans add storage, custom domains, more VPN servers, and extras.
Proton Pass or Bitwarden?
Both pass the test that matters: end-to-end encrypted, open source, audited. Bitwarden has been this site's default password manager recommendation for a long time and remains a first-class choice. Proton Pass is the pick if you want passwords, email, VPN, and storage under one subscription and one account. You cannot go badly wrong with either; go with the ecosystem you prefer.
Does this site earn money from Proton links?
Links to Proton on this page may be referral links, and if you subscribe through one, Scrib may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That is the only monetization on this site: no ads, no trackers, no sponsored placements, and Proton did not review, request, or pay for this article. The recommendation came first; the referral link is how you can support Scrib while acting on it.
Keep Reading
- Notes App Encryption at Rest: the who-holds-the-keys test this whole site is built on
- Is Notion Private?: why collaboration tools cannot be private, in their own words
- Best Private Notes Apps for Android: the on-device half of the setup
- Best Private Notes Apps for Windows: and the same for your PC
The Other Half: Notes That Never Touch a Server
Proton covers what must sync. Scrib covers what never should: AES-256 encrypted notes on your device, no account, no cloud, free.
No ads. No tracking. No account needed.