• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Exclusive

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

This Encrypted Email App Is Benefiting From Yahoo’s Security Disaster

By
Paul Sawers
Paul Sawers
and
VentureBeat
VentureBeat
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Paul Sawers
Paul Sawers
and
VentureBeat
VentureBeat
Down Arrow Button Icon
December 22, 2016, 12:17 PM ET
Online Crime
BERLIN, GERMANY - AUGUST 20: Symbolic feature with topic online crime, data theft and piracy and hacker, here the silhouette of a person with a laptop in his hands, on Augut 20, 2015 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)Photography by Thomas Trutschel Photothek via Getty Images

ProtonMail, the encrypted email service that touts itself as NSA-proof, claimed that user growth doubled in the wake of the latest Yahoo email hack scandal, an event that saw an “unauthorized third party” access data from more than one billion Yahoo accounts.

That particular hack dated back to 2013, but last week’s revelation came just a few months after another high-profile Yahoo email hack was uncovered, this one affecting 500 million accounts. Throw into the mix controversy surrounding Yahoo’s reported complicity in helping U.S. authorities scan customer emails, and you’d perhaps be correct to question anyone who continues to use Yahoo to send and receive emails.

But one company’s loss is another’s gain, and Swiss email startup ProtonMail says it has seen an uptick in visitors since the second Yahoo hack was exposed, with a notable rise emanating from one country in particular.

“After Yahoo, new user growth doubled, but a huge surge is coming from Germany after the German government took the unprecedented step of advising German citizens to stop using Yahoo Mail,” ProtonMail cofounder Andy Yen said in an email to VentureBeat. “The result is that many users are now turning to ProtonMail as a more secure alternative to Yahoo Mail.”

Indeed, Germany’s cybersecurity agency, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), was particularly critical of Yahoo for failing to adopt “adequate encryption techniques” to protect its users’ data.

“Considering the repeated cases of data theft, users should look more closely at which services they want to use in the future and security should play a part in that decision,” BSI president Arne Schoenbohm said in a statement last week. “There is an array of German email providers for whom security is not a foreign concept.”

As a result of this statement, Germany has become ProtonMail’s second-biggest market in terms of visitors, though the company doesn’t translate that figure into actual sign-ups. But, if nothing else, the surge demonstrates an increased interest in more secure communication services.

ProtonMail was founded out of CERN in 2013, launched in beta a year later, and went on to raise more than $2.5 million in funding before launching fully to the public earlier this year. In a nutshell, ProtonMail promises a secure email service that uses client-side encryption, meaning that all data is encrypted before it arrives on the company’s servers. The company also introduced two-factor authentication (2FA) as an added layer of security earlier this month.

Though ProtonMail says that new-user sign-ups have hit an all-time high, how can it be sure that the spike is definitely linked to Yahoo’s woes? “We first noticed the trend on social media, when a large number of tweets began appearing mentioning ProtonMail as a Yahoo Mail replacement,” the company explained in a blog post. “Starting on December 15th, the day the Yahoo breach was announced, ProtonMail’s growth rate effectively doubled.”

The company produced this chart to illustrate its growth following the Yahoo hack revelation, though without any metrics on the y-axis, it’s difficult to garner a full picture of how substantial the increase actually is.

protonmail_volume_yahoo_replacement

Notably, however, ProtonMail also said that sign-ups had doubled in the days following Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential victory last month, a trend that we saw across the online privacy realm, with a number of virtual private network (VPN) services and encrypted messaging apps noting that they’d seen increased interest in the wake of the election.

In short, it appears as though more people are waking up and taking notice of the online privacy debate.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat. All rights reserved.

About the Authors
By Paul Sawers
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
By VentureBeat
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Oakland, California, on May 12, 2026. (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)
NewslettersFortune Tech
Musk v. Altman: That’s all, folks
By Andrew NuscaMay 19, 2026
16 minutes ago
joel
Commentarysaas
The SaaSpocalypse isn’t killing software. It’s exposing where software value really lives
By Joel HronMay 19, 2026
50 minutes ago
ESG may be fading—but moral leadership isn’t
NewslettersCEO Daily
ESG may be fading—but moral leadership isn’t
By Diane BradyMay 19, 2026
1 hour ago
College graduates sitting at commencement yell.
AIEducation
College students are booing commencement speakers celebrating AI, but the wave of hate hasn’t stopped them from using it to cheat on their exams
By Sasha RogelbergMay 19, 2026
2 hours ago
Environmental advocates and progressive lawmakers hold a rally in support of legislation that would put a moratorium on new data centers in the state on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y.
AIData centers
Americans’ AI hate wave might just be gathering steam: Data centers could hike power costs in some states over 50% by 2030
By Tristan BoveMay 19, 2026
3 hours ago
Mortgage rates today, May 19, 2026
Personal Financemortgages
Mortgage rates today, May 19, 2026
By Glen Luke FlanaganMay 19, 2026
3 hours ago

Most Popular

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
7 days ago
While Trump insisted the Iran war would end ‘soon,’ an account in his name was buying millions in oil, defense and gold
Economy
While Trump insisted the Iran war would end ‘soon,’ an account in his name was buying millions in oil, defense and gold
By Eva RoytburgMay 18, 2026
15 hours ago
Current price of oil as of May 18, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of May 18, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerMay 18, 2026
21 hours ago
EXCLUSIVE: An hour in the Oval Office with the CEO-in-Chief, President Trump
Politics
EXCLUSIVE: An hour in the Oval Office with the CEO-in-Chief, President Trump
By Alyson ShontellMay 18, 2026
1 day ago
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
AI
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
3 days ago
Spirit Airlines apologizes to all the Americans who can't afford any summer vacation flights as it shuts down
Travel & Leisure
Spirit Airlines apologizes to all the Americans who can't afford any summer vacation flights as it shuts down
By Rio Yamat and The Associated PressMay 18, 2026
21 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.