ProtonMailImage Credit: Paul Sawers / VentureBeat **This article was updated on March 16, 2020, to reflect additional input from Proton, which told VentureBeat that it would only use Google’s infrastructure in very limited situations — and that it won’t be directing actual connections through Google as this article originally stated. However, due to the nature of this new tool and the adversaries that it is looking to counter, the company is unable to disclose exactly how the technology works. Proton Technologies, the company behind encrypted email provider ProtonMail, has announced plans to circumvent censorship by using “alternative routing” techniques which will rely on third-party infrastructure and networks, which may include the likes of Amazon, Cloudflare, and Google — a company that ProtonMail has long been critical of over its privacy practices. Proton, which was founded out of Switzerland in 2013 by academic researchers working on particle physics projects at CERN, promises ProtonMail users full privacy via client-side encryption, meaning that nobody can intercept and read their emails — it has frequently positioned itself as the antithesis of Gmail, which serves as a vital cog in Google’s advertising wheel.… Read more