Proton adds detailed dark web monitoring for paid plans

Proton is out with the latest upgrade for its users on a paid tier. Dark web monitoring is here to help you keep your online credentials as safe as possible with alerts when you need to update passwords due to data breaches and more. Here’s how it works.

Proton announced the new feature on its blog today:

If your credentials leak, timely alerts are critical so you can take action to secure your accounts, prevent identity theft, and avoid financial losses. In recent months, we’ve released multiple security features designed to fortify your digital identity against attacks, and today we’re excited to launch another feature for everyone with a paid Proton plan: Dark Web Monitoring for credential leaks.

Proton highlights that data breaches in the US almost doubled from 1,802 in 2022 to 3,205 in 2023. And to start 2024, we saw a whopping 26 billion records leaked in a massive hack.

The new feature will describe what breach a third-party account of yours using a Proton email was in and share specifics like if the password was leaked, your address, etc.

That means Proton’s alerts are more detailed than what comes built-in with Apple’s password manager on iPhone and Mac.

Here’s how the new Proton Security center alerts look:

And here’s how it looks when viewing the specifics of a dark web alert:

This is how Proton’s dark web monitoring works:

Proton’s dark web detection continuously scans dark web hubs associated with illicit activities, such as hacking forums and markets, searching databases for emails contained in data breaches that use any of Proton’s 19 email domains (for example, @pm.me, @protonmail.ch, etc.) as well as any other information associated with those email addresses (like stolen credit card details, for example). We use our own threat intelligence datasets that are also enriched with data from Constella Intelligence, a leader in digital threat management. No user data is ever shared with third parties, but we do analyze reports from third parties any time they find leaked information or data stolen in a hack from a third-party online service that’s tied to a Proton Mail email address or a Proton Pass alias.

Our system will alert you if it finds leaked details of any of your accounts for third party websites. You’ll receive comprehensive information about the breach, including what data was compromised and the affected service, if available. Additionally, we explain what you can do to safeguard your digital identity and minimize the risks of future breaches.

You can download the Proton Mail desktop app now for free – but you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to get dark web protection.

Proton Unlimited goes from as low as $7.99/month when choosing the 2-year plan or from $12.99/month when paying monthly.

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