Summary

  • Proton Mail will monitor the dark web for compromised credentials to enhance user security.
  • The service offers detailed descriptions of breaches and suggests remedial actions.
  • Alerts are available on the Proton Mail Security Center, with plans for email and phone notifications.



Information security is of the utmost importance in today’s digital age, and security-focused advancements like passkeys and encrypted emails are rapidly making life harder for bad actors and hackers. However, phishing still remains a leading cause of data breaches, and stolen credentials are often found for sale on the dark web. Well, privacy-focused Swiss email provider Proton Mail just announced it will monitor the dark web to alert users of compromised credentials.


Android phone with black key placed on top of screen

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While your credentials shouldn’t be up for grabs to the highest bidder, it is quite challenging to stay current with the latest data breaches, which are commonplace now. The password manager built into Google Chrome has a feature which alerts you of compromised passwords, but that might be easy to miss, especially if you don’t use the browser. Proton users can breathe a sigh of relief, though.


Detailed tracking is a whole package

Proton-Dark-Web-Monitoring-1
Source: Proton

The Swiss brand just announced it will actively monitor the dark web and alert Proton Mail users if their login credentials were compromised in attacks targeting third-parties where the Proton email address was used to sign up. Besides a detailed description of exactly what was compromised in the breach, Proton will also suggest suitable remedial action to protect your Proton account online.


This is a great step to bolster online security, especially until passkeys go mainstream, and password reuse remains a rampant problem. Alerts related to your leaked details will trigger alerts in the Proton Mail Security Center on the web and desktop. The company promises to introduce email alerts and notifications on phones soon.

Proton has also been on a roll, bringing more useful services like the note-taking app, Standard Notes, into its fold. Together with services like Proton Drive, VPN, and Proton Pass, this suite of privacy-first services is getting close to rivaling the titans like Google.