Proton, a privateness startup finest recognized for its Proton Mail encrypted e-mail service, has simply introduced that its end-to-end encrypted cloud storage service is on the market beginning at the moment as an Android and iOS app. Proton Drive is on the market in each free and paid tiers, providing customers a solution to securely add, retailer, and share recordsdata immediately from their cellular gadgets.

Proton Drive’s end-to-end encryption ensures that solely the consumer and the individuals they share with can entry recordsdata — not even Proton itself can entry the info with out your permission. Users can ship folders and recordsdata to anybody by way of sharing hyperlinks (together with non-Proton customers) with choices for passwords and expiration dates. Access may be revoked at any time, and metadata is encrypted, together with file and folder names, creation dates, and thumbnails. You may sync and preview recordsdata by way of the Proton Drive cellular apps.

The free model of Proton Drive supplies 1GB of free cloud storage, which may be upgraded to 200GB of storage for $3.99 a month as a standalone subscription, or 500GB by way of the Proton Unlimited plan for $9.99 a month, which additionally consists of Proton Mail, Proton Calendar, and Proton VPN. There’s no restrict to file sizes.

And since Proton relies in Switzerland, the corporate claims that Proton Drive falls exterior US and EU jurisdiction and isn’t topic to intelligence-sharing agreements like Five Eyes or Fourteen Eyes. The Swiss Constitution does embody knowledge processing rules (Article 13), although it ought to be famous that some Swiss legislation solely applies to Swiss residents. Other privateness protections such because the revised Swiss Data Protection Act (revDPA) nevertheless, can supply some protections for individuals residing exterior of Switzerland.

“While there have always been apps to upload and store files on your phone, they provide poor privacy, and data leaks from mobile devices are common,” stated Proton CEO Andy Yen in a press launch. “Proton Drive brings end-to-end encrypted file storage to iOS and Android and aligns with Proton’s mission to ensure that privacy tools are easy to use and freely available.”

Proton (to not be confused with the Linux compatibility layer of the same name) first launched Proton Drive for the net earlier this yr, and claims that pictures comprise round 50 % of the a million recordsdata uploaded to the service thus far.