Proton Mail

[Anonymous]

One of my takeaways from conference was that I needed to move forward on setting up a secure way to transmit confidential info, such as passwords and account numbers. Despite the fact that I constantly tell my clients that email and messaging are NOT secure, they continue to use them for “top secret” info.

I’m trying the free version of Proton Mail, but want to upgrade to the paying level. The free version does not let me link it to my current email address.

Before I do that, I’d love to know if anyone else has used Proton Mail or any other service to provide a secure way to email. I noticed that most of the CPAs have a secure portal for transmitting tax info, but assume that is expensive and through whatever tax software they use. I’m aiming for something secure and affordable.

Happy New Year!

[Leona O’Connor]

Hi Lynn,
Such a strange coincidence – I was just logging out of my Proton Mail account when I read your message! I have been using the free account for the past month and have been very happy with it. I don’t see the need to have it direct to my business email address. I just give them that email address to send any confidential information, and use my regular one for all other correspondence.

Also, you can use the secure app Signal for sending confidential text messages, which has been very helpful for those clients who prefer to text.

Looking forward to hearing what others have to say about this as well.

[Anonymous]

Proton mail was one of my recommendation at my Digital Security talks at the AADMM conference. I’ve been using it for a couple of months. Highly recommended and worth the cost.

Another way to exchange these things is to create a shared document using something like Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, Office365 or any other document sharing service. Then they can type whatever they want and you can erase it after you read it. This is nice because you have one link you can use over and over again so you can create a bookmark in their browser.

For the more tech savvy users, besides Signal, which Penny recommended, there is PrivateBin https://privatebin.net/ which is a free and secure service for pasting information. They would paste the information, add a password and can even put in an “Expires” timer to automatically delete. The data is encrypted/decrypted in your browser so the server has no knowledge of what is being typed. This is more of a one way message transmission as opposed to the shared document where both ends can type things in.

[Author]

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