I just got access to Proton Wallet earlier today. Is there anything you’d like to know?
Q&A
I don't see the point to this. All their other products seem to be targeted at replacing less private, non-E2EE services. Mail, calendar, VPN, and a password manager are excellent choices with no major well integrated E2EE solution. This, not so much.
Also, I don't really get why they chose Bitcoin, it's PoW and is much less energy efficient than other alternatives while also not being as private as Monero, nor having things like smart contracts.
If you want the answers to the questions you listed, then it's pretty much covered in the privacy podcast called OptOut. Linked here if u wanted to have a listen.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1790481/15505787-proton-wallet-w-andy-yen.mp3
Do you have a tl;d...l?
Thanks
They probably started with BTC because the majority of the world believes that it's private (we know it's easily traceable). Bring in the new users!
Signed up for decent encrypted email and now I feel like Proton's only goal is to shove so much extra shit down my throat that they'll choke me to death- and apparently I'm the only subscriber completely uninterested in any of it.
I genuinely don't get why they made a Bitcoin wallet, but all of their other services are direct competitors to (and imo much better than) the Google suite apps and made it much easier to de-google my life
De-Googling is great, keep at that.
That said, Totally investing in a single other provider may not be the answer.
It's enough for me to know I'm not supporting Microsoft or Google.
Besides this wallet, what are you referring to with 'extra shit'?
Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Pass, etc- none of these existed when I signed up but here they are. If anything I'd rather opt out of all the extra stuff for a discounted rate, but that'll never happen.
If you just want Mail, there's the Mail Plus plan, which is just the Mail (with a little bit of Drive for mail storage) and cheaper than the Unlimited plan. I see what you're saying though. I'd like more customisable plans too. I use Drive and Mail, but don't want the others and the Mail Plus plan doesn't have enough for Drive (for my usecase), so I have to shell out for Unlimited.
Do you ever use the VPN?
Already have a different provider, so no.
That's fair. It has worked very well for me. Pass has been good too. I would probably use Calendar if they put more work into it, but it's still missing quite a few features. Like others have mentioned, Wallet is a bit of a head-scratcher, but if it could compete with Apple/Google Wallet, I would try it out for sure.
To be fair, why not just drop the other provider and use Proton? Should be cheaper that way. I also didn't ask for any of this, and use email almost exclusively, but the VPN has come in handy a few times.
I received my invite today as well (Portugal). Overall here are my first impressions:
Being on whatever plan you're on shouldn't change anything on the back end.
All that's happening is they've set your account to have permission to access the service.
Even if they revoke your permissions, your data will still be on their servers.
They ask you for all sorts of personal information, which I guess is industry standard, but it’s a third party service
The reason is money laundering / tax evasion laws. There is not really a way to buy crypto anonymously without breaking laws.
I encountered a scary bug in Proton Wallet, posting here in case someone has the same problem
I sent around 20 euros worth of bitcoins to a friend, to test the service. Everything went fine and was very easy and intuitive
Today I logged in and noticed my balance was short by about 220 euros; It indicated that the transaction also sent around 220 euros to a second bitcoin address, classified as "external recipient". This is usually normal, the wallet sends "change" back to itself, but in this case it didn't seem to go back to me and the "external recipient" totally threw me off.
I imported proton wallet with Sparrow Wallet, it showed the same, incorrect, balance. I increased the "gap" value from 20 to 300 and the balance now shows up OK in Sparrow Wallet. The issue happens because Proton Wallet doesn't use the first available change address, it used a random one way further down the list. In my case the "change" income was the change address 20-300th (I had to scroll a lot to find it).
My balance still shows incorrectly in Proton Wallet and the transaction shows as -240 euros. I have reported this issue to Proton, hopefully no one else will be scared :P
Thanks for the heads up!
I just set it up as well. Nothing groundbreaking, but clean interface. Haven’t used the btc via email function yet.
My only concern would be if there was some sort of breach that affected my proton credentials (yes, I realize the odds are low), then that would also give access to my wallet (and passwords, but not using that).
This might be good for a hot spending wallet, but not sticking anything substantial in there.
You can set a passphrase for the wallet as well as far as I know.
Yeah, correct.
May i ask what country you live in?
I am very interested in how this runs in EU countries. Also the ease of use for absolute crypto noobs.
I’m in the EU. So far, it’s been really easy to follow everything. I made a €20 purchase (you get redirected to a third party, with two available to choose from) without any issues.
Did you have to verify your personal information in some official manner somehow?
Nope. The only time I entered personal information (my full name) was when purchasing bitcoin. I made the purchase through Ramp- one of the brokers you can buy from
Alright, thank you very much 👌
no Monero smdh
Is it open source? Is it decent and relatively bug free?
Empowering you to choose a better internet where privacy is the default. Protect yourself online with Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive. Proton Pass and SimpleLogin.
Proton Mail is the world's largest secure email provider. Swiss, end-to-end encrypted, private, and free.
Proton VPN is the world’s only open-source, publicly audited, unlimited and free VPN. Swiss-based, no-ads, and no-logs.
Proton Calendar is the world's first end-to-end encrypted calendar that allows you to keep your life private.
Proton Drive is a free end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that allows you to securely backup and share your files. It's open source, publicly audited, and Swiss-based.
Proton Pass Proton Pass is a free and open-source password manager which brings a higher level of security with rigorous end-to-end encryption of all data (including usernames, URLs, notes, and more) and email alias support.
SimpleLogin lets you send and receive emails anonymously via easily-generated unique email aliases.