At the end of November, I asked the community on mastodon to send me all their questions about Proton Mail, Drive, VPN, Pass, their features, their privacy, and their security.
I compiled all of these, and interviewed Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton. I couldn’t ask ALL of the questions, since there were 130 non-duplicates, but over the course of 1h30, we still managed to cover a lot of ground.
So, here is the full interview (also available as a video on the Youtube channel if you prefer that).
00:00 Intro
2:11 How did Proton start?
4:18 Why start with email?
6:57 What is Proton’s business model?
9:28 Why set up in Switzerland?
12:28 What data do you have on customers?
15:33 How is encryption important?
19:14 Do you always need to use a VPN?
21:41 Why focus on building an ecosystem?
25:50 Is an Office Suite planned?
27:23 What differentiates Proton from competitors?
31:20 Is Proton a viable alternative to big tech services?
34:26 Why expand to more products instead of finishing existing ones?
38:14 Does the general public care about privacy?
39:40 What’s next for Proton services?
41:02 What are the plans for native Linux clients?
46:57 Will ProtonVPN offer dedicated IPs to everyone?
48:41 What’s the environmental impact of Proton?
50:21 Proton on F-Droid, without Google Play notifications?
52:57 Why are code repos all separated and hard to find?
54:06 Why are addresses ending in “.me” ?
55:51 When will all apps reach feature parity?
57:18 Will SMTP relay be supported?
58:41 Will Proton focus more on businesses in the future?
1:00:44 Why put all your eggs in one basket with just Proton services?
1:02:18 Will Proton support passkeys?
1:04:16 Does E2E matter is the recipient isn’t using it?
1:05:44 Will Proton disable port forwarding in VPN?
1:07:35 Is encryption enough to make email private?
1:10:01 What protects users from a change in Proton’s code licensing?
1:12:08 How does Proton protect its infrastructure?
1:14:09 Impacts of Quantum Computing on privacy and security?
1:15:19 What’s the future of Proton Bridge?
1:17:19 When will Proton photos be a thing?
1:18:11 Plans for Proton Notes?
1:19:14 Will VPN support the Apple TV?
1:22:07 Support the show
