There are many reasons you may need to share passwords, bank details, and other highly sensitive information. But we noticed that many people do this via messaging apps or other methods that put your data at risk.
In response to the needs of our community, we’re excited to announce that you now have a more secure and convenient way to share your items in your password manager with anyone, even if they don’t use Proton Pass.
With Secure Links, you can copy and paste unique, expirable links to your logins, bank cards, notes, and other items while preserving end-to-end encryption. Proton Pass makes securely sharing sensitive information simple and lets you manage your Secure Links from a central dashboard, ensuring you’re always in complete control of the items you’ve shared.
Starting today, we’ll begin rolling out Secure Links to everyone with a Proton Visionary or Lifetime plan. In the coming days, everyone with a paid Pass plan will be able to use Secure Links.
For a limited time, we’re helping more people take advantage of secure sharing and other advanced features by offering a year of Pass Plus for only $12. You not only get Secure Links but also unlimited vaults and hide-my-email aliases, Dark Web Monitoring, our Proton Sentinel security program, integrated 2FA authenticator, and more. This offer ends July 21.
Why traditional password sharing is not secure
It’s no secret that many people share passwords to streaming services and other subscription accounts. Family members also need to share other items like credit cards, ID numbers, and bank account logins. In the workplace, colleagues need access to shared WiFi passwords, social media accounts, and more.
Unfortunately, in most cases people share these sensitive items using methods that are inconvenient and not secure, such as text message or email. This makes it difficult to restrict access in the future, and whenever you update your password or other item details, you have to resend the information. Moreover, this increases the risk of data breaches, identity theft, or more sophisticated attacks(new window). Sharing passwords outside of Proton Pass in cleartext breaks end-to-end encryption.
Secure Links are easy to use and protect your data
These unique, expirable links give you more flexibility and control over the items in your Proton Pass account without having to share sensitive information outside of Pass.
Importantly, you still have the ability to share items in your Proton Pass account using vaults. But Secure Links are designed to let you share single items more easily, including with people who don’t have a Pass account.
Here’s how Secure Link sharing works:
- Easy as copy and paste: Sharing links is simple. You can generate, update, or delete Secure Links with a few clicks on any app.
- You’re in control: Set a date for the link to expire (anywhere from one hour up to 30 days) or restrict the number of times your recipient can access the link (from one to infinity). When you’re done sharing, just click the Remove link button in your dashboard.
- Encrypted at all times: Secure Links are end-to-end encrypted so only you and the people you share with can ever see your data. Not even Proton can access it: Secure Links are generated on your device, and when recipients open the link, the browser only sends the first part of the URL (before #decryptionkey) to the Proton servers. This means Proton never has access to the content of your Secure Link.
Better security without compromising convenience
Because Proton Pass is powered by our community rather than advertisers or venture investors, we are able to prioritize your security and privacy above everything else. And since we’re owned by a nonprofit, we’re only accountable to you and to our mission to expand global access to privacy.
To that end, in response to feedback from the community, we’re also launching an Extra Password feature alongside Secure Links. This optional feature lets you create a second password to access credentials stored in Pass for greater compartmentalization and peace of mind. Extra Password is available to the entire Proton Pass community, including those with Free plans.
You can turn on Extra Password now in your security settings. Learn more.
With these new features, we aim to give you the best security possible without asking you to change the way you already use, share, and enjoy your password manager. We look forward to your feedback, which will directly shape the future of our products at Proton.
