It's Getting Harder to Defend Proton

Proton has long been considered the holy grail or de-Googling, but recently their reputation has faltered. While, for the most part, the services they offer are great and reasonably priced, their actions have made me seriously consider leaving them all together and removing them as a recommendation from this site. It's especially hard for that last point, as their products are so good and so simple that I don't know what else I'd recommend. If my only concern was the product offered, privacy, and security, I wouldn't be having these thoughts. They're still the go-to for that. The thing is that I'm attempting to recommend the most "ethical" option and it's becoming increasingly harder to give that title to Proton. Here's my thinking out loud attempt to justify myself one way or the other. The scandals get worse the further you go down.

Their Products

For the most part, Proton's products are great. I mean, I wouldn't be so hesitant to not recommend them if they weren't. I've had great experiences with their customer support in which they've gone out of their way to help in ways they didn't have to. The main issues are their lack of Linux support for Drive and the state of their document suite. The lack of Linux support is especially odd, considering the overlap of people who use Proton and the people who use Linux must be large.

As for their document suite (Docs and Sheets), they just... suck. They should've never been released in their current state, in my opinion. Neither are able to be edited on mobile. On desktop Docs is mostly fine, albeit missing some features, but Sheets doesn't even work. Even when it does work, it takes about 5 minutes of loud fans on my fancy gaming PC to load. After it loads, it's missing crucial features. I would go as far as to say that even if it had a massive "BETA" warning slapped everywhere it still shouldn't have been released today, and it was released in December of 2025 (Proton). As of writing this, I can't even open the Sheets I was barely able to create a few months ago. But whatever, at least the VPN, Mail, Drive, and Pass are amazing.

Their Privacy

Using Proton's platforms does not make you immune from privacy and security woes. For example, just recently they helped the FBI find a Stop Cop City protester, despite their claims of anonymity from the governments of the world (Cox). They suspended journalists after they reported on a hack done by North Korea (Mazurov, Phrack). Proton claimed that they were told by a CERT that they were hacktivists, not journalists, so they did what they legally had to do before reinstating some of them (Proton, Yen). Not that I would know, I'm not a lawyer, but I can't really blame them. When you're trying to be a consumer tech company like they are, if you were to directly go against Western nations with their laws and associations I'm sure you wouldn't last long (Yen). It just makes it weird that they prioritize themselves as a privacy and security first company without including the asterisk that they can't protect you from the government (Proton).

There is also something to be said about not "putting all your eggs in one basket" by using one company for every single thing you do online. Consider diversifying and decentralizing your online activity if your goal is to be as private and secure as possible.

Their President

Andy Yen, the co-founder/CEO of Proton, is... interesting. The actual company normally makes a habit of distancing their views from his, but I can't do the same. Knowing how companies like Palantir and empires like the one the Ellisons operate are, I more or less see the two as one.

Generally, Yen says he leans "left on some issues, and right on other issues" - based on everything I've seen of him, this seems to hold true (Yen, ovenplayer). He seems to constantly feels the need to reply to comments and posts on Reddit about his company's controversies, as if they were personal attacks (see below). He insults his company's users' intelligence (Yen). Before 2025 he made his comments from the official Proton account, but he has since moved to his own account (Yen). He praised Trump's 2024 pick for the head of the DOJ's Antitrust Division (Yen, Mazurov, Keverenge). Based on everything, I don't think this implies he likes or supports Trump - it's more nuanced (Keverenge, ovenplayer). He's appeared on a German podcast hosted by someone that most call far-right, but Yen compares to Joe Rogan (considering that most info about the podcast online is in German, I can't confidently say which one is closer to being correct - I can sure make a guess though) (Berndt, Yen). Clips from this interview are posted on the official Proton socials (Proton, Proton, Proton, Proton, Proton, Proton, Proton, Proton).

Their Politics

In addition to whatever it is that's going on with their co-founder/CEO, the company itself has it's own problems. This is where things get unbearable for me. They've always been weird, but recently it's gotten worse - possibly related to the politics of their upcoming move from Switzerland to Germany (Proton). I can see how it would be difficult to manage a company like Proton, considering that I'd assume their main two customer bases are people who hate the government because it's too far to the right and people who hate the government because it's too far to the left. They have to manage all that while advocating for better privacy laws and advocating against digital ID and VPN restriction laws.

I don't even want to think about how I'd go about that situation. Good thing it's not my job; I'm still going to criticize how they do it. While reading these scandals, keep in mind they supposedly try to stay apolitical (Yen). All this was the "last straw" that finally got me to write this article.

In what is hopefully an isolated incident, they've been found to have sponsored a far-right French YouTuber (Proton). Coming from someone who knows nothing about PR, the company's response to this has been horrible. The fact that they sponsored a far-right creator has almost been overshadowed by everything else. Proton's unprofessional responses about the situation to paying customers on Reddit were laughable. They deleted multiple posts and comments about the situation, before finally letting the one where this discussion happened stay up (Proton, BeepBoopKI, Glittering_Lynx_6429). Yen implies that himself and people at Proton agree with the creator on political things (Yen, Yen) Whoever was messaging from the official Proton Reddit account kept referring to their own personal emotions being hard to manage (Proton, Proton, Proton). They say sponsorships aren't endorsements, but they had to have reviewed the creator they sponsored before giving him money (Proton). After the incident, Yen clarified the difference between actual sponsorships, affiliate links that anyone can get, and the referral links that any Proton user has - despite the fact that the far-right creator in question had an actual sponsorship (Yen).

Reading back and forth comment chains between stereotypical Reddit users, Proton's unprofessional PR team, and whatever their CEO is probably took years off my life. I can't keep track of it all. On the bright side for Proton, I've mostly forgotten about them paying a far-right influencer. They might just need to fire their CEO and their entire PR wing. No wonder they said they "could've handled this better" (Proton). Check out the whole ordeal spanning across r/deGoogle, r/ProtonMail, and r/BuyFromEU if you don't believe me - that is, assuming they don't delete it all. Jeez, I feel stupid citing sources for a Reddit beef.

I want to preface this next part by saying I'm in way over my head with this "investigation". I'm not going to claim I know what I'm talking about when it comes to complicated concepts like propaganda. Form your own opinions. What I do know is that no one else was covering this, so here I go.

They've started posting seemingly Western propaganda to their socials (Proton). I'm guessing not everyone reading this will automatically think that's a bad thing, if you think it's a thing at all, but it certainly is. Wars don't start with nukes on civilian cities, Agent Orange, or bombings on girls schools in West Asia, they start by talking about things like human rights abuses and such - whether they're true or not (UN). Propaganda does not inherently equal untrue and it does not inherently equal evil - but it does equal ulterior motives, which is the part I want to highlight here (JHU, Walton).

Lots of their posts are in collaboration with Vice, which is co-owned by George Soros' management fund (Proton, Proton, Proton, Silberling). Soros is known to spread liberal and anti-communist ideals (Shawcross, Murphy, Miller). It's all especially ironic considering who they post about and how they do it. When they post about non-Western countries like Iran, North Korea, China, or Russia, it's framed as a problem with the country as a whole. They're systemic injustices. When they post about Western countries like the US and countries across Europe, it's framed as a problem to get around, as a problem with the current administration, or it's just how things are.

The North Korean government can "throw you into labor camps", but the US Border Patrol can "pull you over" (without mention of the labor they legally force you to do afterwards) (Proton, Proton, Cooley). "The latest iPhone update" introduced "mandatory" age verification due to "pressure from a new law" and chat control was "pushed by many American nonprofits", but Iran and Russia have simply outright "banned" VPNs (Proton, Proton, Proton). North Korea "might be the most tightly controlled society on Earth", but in the US a simple "JD Vance meme" got a tourist banned from the US and in Switzerland they "want" to enforce mass surveillance (Proton, Proton, Proton). Right next to videos titled "How Cartels are Using FPV Drones" and "Inside North Korea's Bubble" is a video about avoiding the prying eyes of the the US Border Patrol (considering the recent actions of ICE), a video about a secret surveillance infrastructure building right in Manhattan, and tons of content about upcoming Western digital ID laws (Proton, Proton, Proton, Proton, Proton). It may not seem like much, but they're humanizing the country the nuked Japan twice while demonizing the others. It sounds like a textbook example of the propaganda model to my uneducated eyes.

My goal here is not to try to tell how how to think about the propaganda itself and whether or not it's true, just think about the fact that a privacy focused tech company is posting it. Regardless of your beliefs, I think that should make them untrustworthy in your eyes. Check it out for yourself and make your own opinions. I'm not the only one who has noticed all this, as the comments often point out.

The Verdict

That just leaves one question: do I keep suggesting them? I... still don't know. If there were better alternatives, I'd probably have stopped a while ago. Nothing else comes close to Google and Microsoft's massive ecosystems. I want to recommend the easiest and simplest thing to switch to, and that is still Proton.

I've looked into the alternatives for all the things Proton offers. Lots of them are great, but lots of them are significantly more complicated than Proton's. It would require finding an alternative to everything - Mail, VPN, Pass, and Drive - and asking you to replace Proton's single suite with five different ones that aren't as recognized. If it was just for me, I could change no problem - but it's for everyone. I already ask you to switch a lot on this site, I don't want to add more. But what other option do I have?

I've heard good things about Tuta with their Mail, Calendar, and Drive, but I haven't tried them myself. There's not many options for online based document suites (Proton's isn't even a good option), but there is LibreOffice locally. As for password managers, there is Bitwarden. People like Mullvad VPN.

At least they're infinitely better than big tech. They may have bad PR and propaganda, but at least they aren't arming a genocide or in bed with Trump. What isn't propaganda in modern society? They're a nonprofit - that's gotta count for something, right (Proton)?

Look, if you're a "techy" person and you have a better idea of what I could recommend to the layperson (or whatever other thoughts about the situation, considering my goal of recommending the ethical options), I'm more than all ears. I think, for the time being, I'll keep them in my arsenal. They're on thin ice though; I'm not sure how many more scandals I can take before I pack it up and move to the third email provider of my life.