In a recent post, I alluded to the fact that I was being drawn back into the Proto ecosystem by the company raising the amount of storage for Proton Drive from 500MB to 5GB. Playing around with this with some files that needed full, secure encryption protection at rest and was as in transit, I realised that my time as a pCloud subscriber had come to an end.
I was a Proton premium user some years back, but disliked the way that Proton Mail was handled by my two Android devices. Fortunately, after digging around, I found Mailfence as a good alternative which worked with IMAP so I could use it via Postbox for Windows and Aqua Mail on my Android devices. Back then Proton only had email, with VPN, Drive and Pass being added later. Now, with Proton Bridge, I can run Proton Mail as a seconday email on Postbox.
My first step was to plump for Proton VPN after becoming increasingly frustrated with Surfshark. I also had a parallel NordVPN account which had some time to run but withdrew from because the increasingly close links between the two companies worried me. Proton then announced its Pass password manager and with a special deal, I signed up for that to see how it compared to Bitwarden. My penultimate transition was to the Proton Calendar. I was seeking a way out of Google’s clammy little mitts and this was it. The only sad thing was that I had to say farewell to Business Calendar 2 which had been my trusty aid on Android for many years.
Lastly, my transfer to Proton Drive was largely driven by the fact that pDrive only encrypted files in transit. If you wanted the full-house encryption experience you had to pay an extra 50 Euros a year. A query re what happens to my original VPN subscription was swiftly answered by the tech support team “Any unused days from your previous subscription are prorated back to you in the form of account credits and automatically applied towards your new subscription so you do not lose the money that you have previously paid.”
So, now I am fully Protoned and I hope this is the last time I shall have to switch services, the downside to being a fickle, techy geek!
