
This digital profile is put together from data gathered by most of the tech companies whose products you use and then sold to and by data brokers.ĭata brokers include credit reporting companies, people-finding websites, and many analytics and marketing companies. It’s not just commercial messaging that targets you based on your digital profile, but even news and entertainment content. People who are less tech-savvy or part of age groups with less experience navigating the internet tend to leave even more breadcrumbs and are usually more susceptible to ads, fake news and other types of manipulation. Are you getting email newsletters, special offers or political fundraising calls that you never signed up for? This is a given, whether you’re using a social platform, shopping online, signing a petition, donating to a cause you care about or signing up for a different newsletter that you’re actually interested in, or any other activity that requires you to provide an email address. This information can then be shared with other members of the Five Eyes allegiance.Additionally, the types of activity that Google tracks is even more encompassing across devices and operating systems when you have a Gmail address and you use it to create accounts for various services - even if you’re not using Google’s Chrome browser. (And in the U.S., emails are considered “abandoned” after 180 days, so the government can request them without a warrant.) This includes inbox contents, metadata, IP addresses, and more. and may be forced by law to turn over information on its users. Switzerland is not part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement that exists between the U.S., Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.īy comparison, Google is located in the U.S. This means that ProtonMail can’t be forced to hand over data to authorities in the U.S. In addition to not being able to read the email stored on their servers, ProtonMail is based in Switzerland, where privacy laws are notoriously strict. RELATED: What Is End-to-End Encryption, and Why Does It Matter? ProtonMail’s Servers Are Located in Switzerland

Unlike with ProtonMail, which explicitly supports the feature, working with PGP inside of Gmail is much less streamlined and borderline unusable on mobile. Using PGP inside of Gmail is possible but difficult, with browser extensions like Mailvelope and FlowCrypt making it easier to manage.
