ProtonMail will get a slick new look, as privateness tech eyes the mainstream – TechCrunch

End-to-end encrypted electronic mail service ProtonMail has refreshed its design, updating with a cleaner look and a extra customizable consumer interface — together with the power to select from a bunch of themes (darkish and contrasting variations are each within the combine).

Last month the Swiss firm formally introduced passing 50 million users globally, because it turned seven years previous. Over these years privateness tech has come a good distance when it comes to usability — which in flip has helped drive adoption.

ProtonMail’s full integration of PGP, for instance, makes the gold commonplace of E2E encryption invisibly accessible to a mainstream web consumer, offering them with a technical assure that it can not poke round of their stuff.

Its new look (see screenshot gallery under) is admittedly only a cherry on the cake of that underlying end-to-end encryption — however as utilization of its product continues to step up it’s essentially paying extra consideration to design and consumer interface particulars…

Proton has additionally been busy constructing out a collection of productiveness instruments which it may well cross-promote to webmail customers, utilizing the identical privateness promise as its gross sales pitch (it talks about providing an “encrypted ecosystem”).

And whereas ProtonMail is a freemium product, which generally is a pink flag for digital privateness, Proton’s enterprise has the credibility of all the time having had privateness engineering at its core. Its enterprise mannequin is to monetize by way of paying customers — who it says are subsidizing the free tier of its instruments.

One notable change to the refreshed ProtonMail internet app is an app switcher that lets customers shortly change between (or certainly uncover) its different apps: Proton Calendar and Proton Driver (an E2E encrypted cloud storage providing, presently nonetheless in beta).

The firm additionally affords a VPN service, though it’s price emphasizing that whereas Proton’s pledge is that it doesn’t monitor customers’ internet shopping, the service structure of VPNs is totally different so there’s no technical “zero access” assure right here, as there’s with Proton’s different merchandise.

A distinction of colour within the icons Proton shows within the app switcher — the place Mail, Calendar and Drive are coloured purple like its wider model livery and solely the VPN is tinted inexperienced — is maybe meant to signify that distinction.

Other tweaks to the up to date ProtonMail interface embody redesigned keyboard shortcuts which the corporate says makes it simpler to verify messages and fast filters to type mails by learn or unread standing.

The firm’s Import-Export app — to assist customers switch messages to allow them to make the change from one other webmail supplier — exited beta again in November. Since then they’ve really baked this performance into ProtonMail (as a characteristic known as Import Assistant), quite than needing to obtain a separate app.

Zooming out, adoption of privateness tech is rising for a lot of causes. As properly because the elevated accessibility and usefulness that’s being pushed by builders of privateness tech instruments like Proton, rising consciousness of the dangers round digital information breaches and privacy-hostile advert fashions is a parallel and highly effective driver — to the purpose the place iPhone maker Apple now routinely attracts consideration to rivals’ privacy-hostile digital exercise in its advertising and marketing for iOS, looking for to place clear blue water between the way it treats customers’ information versus the data-mining competitors.

Proton, the corporate behind ProtonMail, is positioned to profit from the identical privateness messaging. So it’s no shock to see it making use of the iOS App Privacy disclosures launched by Apple last year to focus on its personal aggressive distinction.

Here, for instance, it’s pointing customers’ consideration to background information exchanges which underlie Google-owned Gmail and contrasting all these direct traces feeding into Google’s advert concentrating on enterprise with completely no surveillance in any respect of ProtonMail customers’ messages…

Commenting on ProtonMail’s new look in an announcement, Andy Yen, founder and CEO, added: “Your email is your life. It’s a record of your purchases, your conversations, your friends and loved ones. If left unprotected it can provide a detailed insight into your private life. We believe users should have a choice on how and with whom their data is shared. With the redesigned ProtonMail, we are offering an even easier way for users to take control of their data.”

This report was up to date with further element about Import Assistant