Gone are the days when you had to choose between privacy and online productivity: encrypted document tools have finally arrived on Proton Drive.
Disconnecting from data-hungry big tech apps has been at the heart of Proton’s mission since the beginning: to build a better internet where privacy is the default. In addition to secure cloud storage, the Swiss-based privacy company offers secure email integrated with encrypted calendaring, and one of the best VPN services on the market.
Proton Docs emerged as a way to ensure that document creation and collaboration is secure and user-friendly. Like the company’s other products, Docs is completely free to use. Note that at the time of writing, the tool is only available on the web.
How does Proton Docs work?
“In a world where big tech companies are constantly invading privacy and mishandling data, Docs provides a seamless and reliable solution for document editing and collaboration,” said Anant Vijay Singh, product lead at Proton Drive. “Our users can confidently create and share documents knowing their information is protected.”
Docs promises to employ the same level of encryption as Proton Drive. Simply put, every document you create or collaborate on will be protected by end-to-end encryption, meaning only the sender and recipient can access the content. The company says that file names and paths, as well as changes and keystrokes, are encrypted.
Thanks to the recent acquisition of encrypted note-taking app Standard Notes, the team can now integrate all the popular features required for professional use into Docs, from Markdown and rich text support to code blocks and checklists. Additionally, Docs also supports a variety of document formats, including Microsoft .docx, ensuring seamless integration.
“Drawing up a joint document that maintains E2EE is extremely challenging and we have not seen anyone else doing it in the market,” a Proton spokesman said.
The biggest challenges seemed to be key exchange and synced key information, the ability to invite people to collaborate and revoke those permissions, and the ability to share documents privately.
The company says that what helped the team was that Proton Drive was already built with the expectation that these features would be added at a later date: In fact, just a few weeks before the release of Docs, Proton Drive was upgraded with new sharing features in preparation for integrating new collaboration tools.
While the new feature will no doubt be welcomed by privacy-conscious users looking for a reliable alternative to Google Docs, Proton promises this is just the first step towards making document editing and collaboration even more private.
Docs will soon be upgraded with many new features designed to improve your user experience and productivity, so stay tuned for updates.
In the meantime, free and paid Proton users can get started using the Docs tool on the web, but keep in mind that you’ll need to upgrade to a premium subscription if 5GB of storage isn’t enough for your needs.
For more details, check out Proton’s official blog post.