Proton Mail

The mailbox is central to your online activity and often plays a crucial role in your IT security. If an attacker succeeds in compromising your mailbox, he gains easy access to your other accounts via the "forgot password" function. This can enable him to control your social networks, bank accounts and other online services, as today, the email address is often used as a unique identifier of your online identity. Therefore, securing your mailbox is very important to protect yourself from attacks.

To ensure the security of your mailbox, it's important to adopt a few simple best practices, which we explore in this tutorial for computer beginners. It's also important to choose a secure e-mail provider offering advanced protection options and a robust privacy policy. That's why I'm recommending ProtonMail in this tutorial. Even if you prefer not to use this provider, the best practices presented here can be applied to any mailbox to enhance its security.

ProtonMail is a rather secure e-mail solution, thanks to several features. Firstly, ProtonMail provides end-to-end encryption of your e-mails, meaning that only the sender and recipient can read their contents. In theory, even ProtonMail cannot access its users' e-mails. This encryption is applied automatically, requiring no specific technical skills on the part of users.

What's more, ProtonMail incorporates advanced technologies to protect your privacy, including blocking certain tracking systems and masking your IP address. Being based in Switzerland, Proton benefits from some of the data protection laws not found in other countries. What's more, ProtonMail is open-source, allowing independent experts to freely audit the software code.

Proton's business model is based on a subscription system, which is reassuring since it indicates that the company is financing itself without necessarily exploiting its users' data. In this tutorial, we'll explore how to use the free version of ProtonMail, but there are also several subscription levels offering more features. This business model is preferable to an entirely free system, which might lead you to wonder whether our personal data is being used for profit. Fortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case with ProtonMail.

Visit the official proton website: https://proton.me/

Click on the "Create an account" button:

You can choose from various packages to suit your needs. To get started, you can opt for a free account, which will enable you to test ProtonMail's basic services. Later, if you want to access additional features and other Proton software such as Calendar, VPN, or Password Manager, you may consider subscribing to a paid package.

You will then be taken to your account creation page.

You can choose the domain name you'd like to have on your e-mail address by clicking on the little arrow. This choice has no impact on what happens next.

Also choose your email address identifier.

You will then be asked to set a password. It's important to choose a strong password at this stage, as it will allow access to your mailbox. A strong password should be as long as possible, use a wide variety of characters, and be chosen at random. In 2024, the minimum recommendations for a secure password are 13 characters, including numbers, upper and lower case letters and symbols, provided the password is truly random. However, I recommend opting for a password of at least 20 characters, including all possible types of characters, to guarantee its security for longer.

Using a password manager is an excellent practice. Not only does it enable you to store your passwords securely without having to memorize them, but it can also generate long, random passwords for you. Human beings are indeed very bad at creating random sequences, and an insufficiently random password can be vulnerable to brute force attacks. I also recommend that you consult our comprehensive tutorial on setting up a password manager for more details on this subject:

Click on the "Create account" button.

Solve the CAPTCHA.

Choose a display name. This is the name that will be shown to your recipient when you send an email. Choose your real name or a pseudonym.

Proton also offers you the option of setting up a method of recovering your account, either via your telephone number, or with another email address. It's important to understand that this option can increase the attack surface of your mailbox. For you, it's extra security to regain access to your account if you forget your password, but for a hacker, it's an additional opportunity to attempt to break into your account. You don't have to choose this recovery option, but if you decide not to, make sure you keep a secure copy of your password. Otherwise, if you lose your password, you won't be able to recover access to your mailbox.

Congratulations, your Proton mailbox is now created! Start by choosing your mailbox theme colors.

If you wish, you can also set up a mail forwarder from your old Gmail mailbox to your new ProtonMail mailbox.

Once you're on your Interface mailbox, I suggest you go to the settings to customize it. Click on the cogwheel icon in the top right-hand corner.

Then click on the "All settings" button.

In the "Dashboard" tab, you'll find your account information. By navigating further down this section, you can select the types of emails you agree to receive from Proton. If you prefer not to receive promotional or informative notifications, you can choose to uncheck everything.

In the "Upgrade plan" tab you can choose a paid package with new features.

In the "Recovery" tab, you can add or modify your recovery methods.

In the "Account and password" tab, you can change your usernames, as well as your account security methods.

At the moment, your mailbox is password-protected only. At the very least, I advise you to add two-factor authentication protection with an application. To do so, click on the check mark.

Confirm your password.

Then scan the QR code using your 2FA application.

For more information, take a look at our tutorial on how to use a 2FA application.

In the "Language and time" tab you can change the Interface's language and time zone.

In the "Appearance" tab you can change the colors of your Interface.

In the "Security and privacy" tab, you have access to various security options. Some of these options are only available with a paying package. You also have the option of disabling the collection of your data by the Proton company, which uses this information for diagnostics and bug resolution.

In the "Import" tab, you can manage the migration of your old emails to your new ProtonMail mailbox. If you prefer to start with a completely new mailbox, without importing your old emails, you can choose to ignore this option.

The "Get the apps" tab lets you download Proton's mobile applications and desktop software to manage your mailbox on these platforms. If you prefer, you can continue to use only the web version of your mailbox you're currently using, as it offers the same functionality.

In the "Messages and composing" tab, you have a myriad of personalization options for your mailbox.

In the "Email privacy" tab, you can choose your email privacy options.

In the "Identity and addresses" tab, you can customize your email signature. If you have a paid account, you can also create several different email addresses, all managed from the same account. This can be very useful for separating your different uses.

In the "Folders and labels" tab, you can create folders and labels to organize your mailbox.

The "Filters" tab lets you manage filters for the emails you receive.

The "Forward and auto-reply" tab lets you manage forwarding and auto-reply for your emails.

In the "Domain names" tab, you have the option of configuring an e-mail address using your own domain, which can be useful if you own a website. For personal use, it's not necessarily necessary to use this feature.

The "Encryption and keys" tab lets you manage your email encryption options. For novice users, it's generally not necessary to modify the settings in this section.

And finally, the "IMAP/SMTP" tab lets you set up a bridge to use ProtonMail with e-mail programs such as Outlook or Apple Mail.

To return to your mailbox home page, click on the "Inbox" button in the top left-hand corner.

Sending an e-mail is very simple: just click on the "New Message" button in the top left-hand corner.

In the "To" box, enter your recipient's email address.

In the "Subject" box, enter the subject of your email.

Write your message.

Finally, click on the "Send" button to send your email.

You can then find your sent messages in the "Sent" tab.

The "Inbox" tab contains the emails you've received.

You can read your e-mails by clicking on them, then arrange them in the various folders you've created.

As mentioned above, you can use your ProtonMail mailbox either via the web version, by downloading the desktop software, or via the mobile application. To download the software, please visit the official website: https://proton.me/mail/download

If you prefer to use only the web version of ProtonMail, remember to bookmark the page in your browser for easier access in the future and to avoid phishing attempts.

To access it, go to the following URL: https://account.proton.me/mail

Enter your login and password, then click on the "Sign in" button. If you have activated two-factor authentication (2FA), you will also be prompted to enter the 6 dynamic digits generated by your application.

You'll return to your ProtonMail inbox.