ProtonMail’s crowdfunding account has been frozen by PayPal

PayPal has frozen the account of security startup ProtonMail, and has questioned whether the firm is legal — and has “government approval” to encrypt emailed communication. ProtonMail is a Swiss-based email service that offers full end-to-end encryption for emails. Developed by MIT, Harvard and CERN researchers, the startup is in the midst of an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to get the service off the ground, and has so far managed to secure over $285,000 in funding. The campaign’s ethos is below: “We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right that must be protected at any cost. The advent of the internet has now made all of us more vulnerable to mass surveillance than at any other point in human history. The disappearance of online privacy is a very dangerous trend as in many ways privacy and freedom go hand in hand.” ProtonMail uses end-to-end encryption, which means your data is already encrypted by the time it reaches the company’s servers — and so even the creators of the email service cannot read the contents. As the company has no access to these messages, they cannot decrypt them so such data cannot be passed on to third parties. ProtonMail uses servers based in Switzerland that are outside the jurisdiction of the US and EU, and no metadata is saved — in theory, keeping email content safe and users anonymous.