Due to the recent announcement of Proton moving to a non-profit structure (although not becoming fully non-profit) I’ve decided to take another look at them and really, Proton Unlimited is an enticing offer. However, the fact of everything from mail, to accounts, to storage being in one place is somewhat disconcerting. Also I recall them being decent, but not particularly outstanding at refusing to provide data to outside sources, there was a situation a while back where they handed over information of a climate activist.
To be fair, mail is insecure by default and if you’re going so far as to write to another Protonmail user you might as well use something actually secure and I am not exactly planning on breaking the law so I’m not too worried about data being handed over to authorities, yet it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and with the state of politics where I live there certainly is a concern that, being queer, I should also be a bit weary of governing bodies as well, as laws may change in the future.
Basically, by switching to Proton I’d be putting a lot of trust in them, instead of splitting it up between things like Mullvad, Bitwarden, etc. and besides a password manager (and to some extent my email provider), while dramatic, a single failure at any point wouldn’t be a total disaster. Are they trustworthy enough for the convenience benefits to be worth it to any of you?
For my threat model, yes they are trustworthy enough. I am not concerned about concealing my identity from a government investigating me for some alleged crime, but rather just transitioning away from Google and investing my time and money into a company that better respects my privacy. As a result, the centralisation doesn’t concern me as much as it does others and I am fine using Proton for VPN, email, calendar and storage. I also use SimpleLogin, which is now owned by Proton. All their applications are well designed and reliable for basic use in my experience, and it is more affordable for me to bundle these services together. I would definitely recommend them to people like myself, but your threat model sounds a little more complicated so you might want to do some further research and see what else is out there.