ProtonMail—an email service that makes it stupid-easy to encrypt communication—has now made it stupid-easy to encrypt your schedule.
The Switzerland-based company uses open source cryptography and end-to-end encryption to secure emails. The free service is about as simple to use as Gmail and has made it easier for anyone to take a big extra step to protect their private conversations.
As VentureBeat points out, for more than a year, Proton has been working to create a safer alternative to another popular Google feature—the personal calendar. Proton announced on Monday that it is has launched ProtonCalendar in beta. So you can encrypt your 2020 schedule.
Information about what you plan to do, where, and with whom, can be just as sensitive as the messages you send and receive. “A calendar is more than just a tool. It’s a record of the moments that make up your life,” reads the Proton announcement. For the longest time, to easily organise these events, you had to let large corporations monitor these special moments.”
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Proton points out that these companies pull information from your calendar “to inform their advertising,” but claims that all the details put into its calendar service “are encrypted on your device before they reach our servers, so that no third party (including ProtonMail) can see the details of your events.”
Google itself should understand the significance of a secure calendar. In November the tech juggernaut was outed for hiring a consulting firm with experience busting unions, thanks to the sleuthing of Google workers who reportedly found company calendar entries showing management met with the firm.
Learn from Google’s slip-up and ditch your Google calendar in 2020.