The Proton Blog

Backup codes: How to store them so you’re never locked out

Jessica Bernard — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 15:22:59 GMT

If you’ve ever been locked out of your account, you’ll know what a relief it is when you can find and use your backup codes to gain access.

This guide explains why you need backup codes, where to store them securely, and how to find them when you need them.

What are backup codes?

A backup code, or recovery code, is the equivalent of a spare key. It’s a way into your accounts if you get locked out and can’t access them through your normal method.

Backup codes are usually provided when you set up an account. You’ll get a set of up to ten random strings, each one only valid for a single use.

If you didn’t get any backup codes or can’t remember where you saved them, you can usually go into your privacy settings and generate a new set of backup codes.

When do you need backup codes?

Mostly, you won’t need your backup codes. A successful login process won’t require a backup verification code, and, thanks to password managers, logins are both easier and more secure than ever.

Here’s what a successful login often looks like:

Enter your credentials: This is usually a username and password, which can be saved in your password manager.
Provide your second factor authentication: The most secure logins require two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA). The first factor is your password, and second factors can include biometric information, an OTP via text message or email, a security key, or a TOTP from an authenticator app.

Multiple factors make your account more secure, but they can create a problem, too; what happens if you lose access to your second factor? This is when you need a backup code.

When to use a backup code

You may need to use a backup or recovery code if:

You’ve lost your phone, YubiKey, or other second-factor device
You’ve upgraded to a new phone and your authenticator app or security key setup didn’t carry over
Your authenticator app was deleted, reset, or stopped syncing
Your phone number changed, so you can no longer receive SMS verification codes

Where to look for saved backup codes when you need them

You’re pretty sure you saved your recovery codes “somewhere safe”, but it can be hard to find them when you actually need them.

Here are some of the most common places people save their backup codes, starting with the ones you probably shouldn’t rely on.

Your Notes app (not recommended)

The Notes app is an easy spot to scribble down ideas, phone numbers, and random bits of information.

It’s usually intended as a temporary space, but it’s often where things like backup codes, PINs, passwords, and phone numbers end up living permanently.

The problem is that most notes apps aren’t encrypted, they often sync in plain text to a cloud server, and they’re readable by anyone holding your unlocked phone.

If you find your backup codes here, use them then move them somewhere more secure.

Your email drafts (not recommended)

Email drafts are the other classic “temporary” dumping ground. But your email is synced across every device you’ve signed in on, and your drafts can stick around for weeks in your trash, even after you delete them.

Plus there’s another catch that makes email drafts risky for backup codes: if your account’s recovery email is the same one whose drafts folder is holding your backup codes, you won’t be able to access your backup codes when you need them.

Your password manager (recommended)

If you’re going to save your backup codes somewhere digital, your password manager is the place. Storing them alongside your login details means the code is exactly where you need it — right alongside the password it’s intended to rescue.

Unlike your notes app or email drafts, a password manager encrypts your data before it ever leaves your device. It’s the best combination of convenience (everything in one place) and security (zero-access encryption), which is why it’s one of our recommended ways to store backup codes.

Hint: Don’t store your backup codes for your password manager inside your password manager.

How to store backup codes

Your workplace will often dictate how and where you should save your backup codes. But if it’s up to you, or you want to go above and beyond, here are some best practices for storing backup codes.

Keep any digital copies of your backup codes stored in an encrypted or password-protected environment

A plain-text file, an unencrypted note, or an unprotected spreadsheet is readable by anyone who gets access to your device, and often by anyone who gets access to your cloud storage, since files sitting in sync folders are typically not encrypted on the server side.

Encrypted storage means a stolen laptop or a breached cloud account doesn’t also hand over the keys to everything protected by 2FA.

Print out a copy of essential backup codes and store them in a secure physical location

A paper copy isn’t going to be impacted by a broken, lost, or stolen laptop, a locked device, or a service you’re locked out of.

Just be sure to treat the printout of your backup codes with the importance it deserves, and put it in a lockbox or safe, rather than on your desk or in a junk drawer.

Keep two copies, in two different formats, in two different places

Digital plus physical is the standard pairing, and keeping them in different places reduces the risk of losing both.

What not to do when storing backup codes

Don’t store your backup codes inside the service the codes are for

If you get locked out of your password manager but that’s where your backup codes are, you won’t be able to use them to regain access. This is the equivalent of keeping a spare key for your house inside your house in case you get locked out.

Don’t store your backup codes on your device, or on a piece of paper next to your device

If your device is stolen or accessed without your permission, this makes it very easy for someone to skip your second factor and gain access to your accounts. This is like taping your spare key to your front door.

Don’t screenshot your backup codes

Most phones auto-upload photos to cloud libraries, sync to family-shared albums, and get scanned by search features that can find text in any image.

Searching “backup codes” in your photo library will probably surface them, which means that (like Notes) anyone with your unlocked phone can access them, too.

Where to find or generate backup codes in your settings

Backup codes for Google

Desktop steps

Go to your Google Account at myaccount.google.com
In the left navigation panel, click Security & sign-in

Under How you sign in to Google, select 2-Step Verification → Backup codes
If you don’t have existing backup codes, you can select Get backup codes to generate your first set of backup codes
Once you have backup codes, you can generate a new set of backup codes by clicking the refresh arrow button

Print, download, or copy the codes

Android steps

Open the Settings app
Tap Google Services
At the top, tap your name and email address
Tap Google Account → Security and sign-in
Under How you sign in to Google, tap 2-Step Verification
Under Backup codes, tap Continue
Tap Get backup codes, or Refresh to generate a new set
Print or download the codes

Backup codes for Facebook

Click on your profile picture in the top right of Facebook
Select Settings & privacy → Settings
Select Accounts Center → Login and security
Select Two-factor authentication, then select the account you want codes for (you may need to re-enter your password)

Under How you get login codes, select Additional methods → Recovery codes
Copy or download codes, or select Get new codes to generate a new set

Backup codes for Proton

Sign in to account.proton.me and select Settings
Select Account and password → Two-factor authentication
Toggle on the Authenticator app and pair your authenticator app via QR code or by entering the key manually

Enter your password and the 2FA code to confirm
Save your recovery codes

Are backup codes secure?

Broadly speaking, yes — but like passwords, backup codes are only as secure as where you keep them. A 20-character password that ticks every box is worthless if it’s on a post-it stuck to your laptop. The same goes for your backup codes.

What makes backup codes safe?

Backup codes are built with several safeguards. They’re randomly generated, which makes them effectively impossible to guess.

They’re single-use, so the moment one is redeemed, it’s dead. And they live inside your account’s security settings, behind your password, so viewing or regenerating them requires proving you’re the account owner.

On most platforms, you can also generate a fresh set at any time, which instantly invalidates the old one — useful if you suspect your codes have been compromised.

What makes backup codes risky?

The risk isn’t the codes themselves, it’s that they are deliberately designed to skip your second factor, which means that anyone holding one only needs your password to get in.

Unlike the rotating codes from an authenticator app, backup codes are static. This means a carelessly stored code is more than just a fleeting risk.

Social engineering is another risk factor for backup codes. Scammers who already have your password could call or message pretending to be your provider’s support team, and ask you to read out a backup code to verify your identity.

No legitimate service will ever ask for one outside the sign-in screen — if someone asks, it’s a scam.

Keep your backup codes safe and within reach with a password manager

Backup codes only protect you if they’re stored somewhere both secure and easy to reach.

A business password manager like Proton Pass keeps your recovery codes end-to-end encrypted, right next to the logins they’re meant to rescue, so that you don’t get locked out of the accounts that you depend on for your work.

FAQ about backup codes

What happens if you run out of backup codes?

Go back to your account’s security settings and generate a new set. Most platforms let you do this at any time. Note that generating a new set usually invalidates any remaining old codes, so save the new set before you need them.

Do backup codes expire?

No, backup codes generally don’t expire, they remain valid until you use them or generate a replacement set.

Can I use a backup code twice?

No, each backup code works once. As soon as you use it to sign in, it becomes permanently inactive by design.

Can I reuse a backup code after regenerating?

No, when you regenerate your set of backup codes, the old set is invalidated. If you saved your codes digitally, replace the old set with the new set wherever you’ve stored it.

Proton’s AI manifesto for software engineering

Bart Butler — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 22:10:17 GMT

For the last couple of decades, governments and others have been spending billions teaching people to code. It was thought to be one of the few professions that would be safe in a changing world, but as it turns out, writing and manipulating code is one of the activities for which AI models are most well-suited. Tech companies have laid off over 1 million employees in the last few years, and Microsoft offered 60,000 buyouts just last week. It is a terrifying and thoroughly disorienting moment for people in the software industry.

About a month ago, I wrote an internal memo where I detailed the AI adoption path that Proton must follow to remain competitive and secure, and what we have missed thus far as an organization that we must rectify in order make this inevitable transition a success. There is little doubt that organizations which fail to transform quickly enough will ultimately let down their teams and those who rely on them.

The memo also served another purpose, which was to convince my colleagues that we are not passive actors in this change, that the company needs their talents and expertise to effectuate it, and that this transition offers opportunities to those who choose to prepare for and engage with it.

The memo is not an in-depth engineering document. It does not delve into the specifics of security, reliability, or infrastructure. Rather, it points the direction of travel for our industry as a whole.

The memo can be found below in full.

Download a PDF of the AI manifesto

AI @ Proton, Engineering Manifesto

It should come as a surprise to no one at Proton, least of all in engineering, that software engineering has irrevocably changed this year if not before. LLMs and their associated tooling have gained the ability to write code to the point where a senior Proton engineer told me a few days ago, and I quote, “No one writes code in {business unit name} anymore.” Like memorizing phone numbers in the 20th century or riding horses in the 19th, writing great code manually is a core skill whose time has passed.

That is in general a fantastic thing. Much of code writing was and is time-consuming drudgery, at least in production and at scale. Documentation and testing are both necessary things that few like doing and historically have often been neglected at the cost of poor communication, inefficiencies and reliability. Boilerplate is the epitome of software engineering grind, and it may never be something a human being has to worry about again. Models can now advise and propose architectures and system designs that, while often imperfect, contribute meaningfully to discussion, decision-making, and education.

Outside Proton, the AI revolution is taking the world by storm. A lot of that is fluff and superficial, cosmetic campaigns more to be seen as innovative rather than truly be innovative. But much of it is very real, and the investments those companies (including our competitors) are making now are going to determine the business environment we operate in the future. This is not about chasing trends — we are being left behind here, and it is an existential threat to the success of the mission itself.

So why, at Proton, does it not feel like the revolution has come? Why has productivity not increased dramatically if everyone is using LLMs all the time already? I believe it comes down to three things, all of which we will need to correct if we are to be successful in the new era that is already here today, not on its way.

The first is a change in engineering culture and engineer mentality. Your job has fundamentally changed. It is no longer to write code, and LLMs are not here to help you write better code faster. Your job is to help the LLM write better code faster. Every engineer is now a team leader, a manager, and your direct reports are the models and agents you use. Guiding them directly and correcting them when they are wrong are part of it, for sure. But a team of two people who always pair-programmed together would not be much of a team, nor would a team where no one worked when the team leader was in a meeting. AI needs to be able to work autonomously and continuously with less and less human babysitting. Your job is to identify problems that the LLM cannot solve on its own and help them not only solve them this time but be able to better solve them next time, not just for you but for everyone: repository-level context files, shared skills and prompts, and habit of ensuring that repeated failures trigger an investigation and a fix. Your job is to push the limits of what the LLM can do autonomously, step in for the things that it cannot, and always think of how you can improve the status quo.

This is not the death of expertise. The LLM is fast. You are slow, but you carry with you a lifetime of experience, judgment calls, and understanding. You are also (hopefully) much less prone to hallucination and being mislead by bad or malicious inputs, and are accountable to yourself, your teammates, and to Proton in a way a model can never be. Together you can do far more, far faster than either can do alone.

It is also not the death of good engineering practices. Maintainability and velocity is better on well-architected codebases. Documentation and tests remain crucial. That said, we need to be open to best practices changing as costs and capabilities change. Testing is a good example of this. Old best practice says that too many tests (particularly end-to-end tests) are a bad tradeoff in a world where writing and maintaining tests are expensive. If writing and maintaining tests become cheap, the place where we draw that line will likely change as well.

The second reason we have not been able to take full advantage of the AI revolution is that we have been almost completely stuck at phase 1 — using LLMs to speed up tasks as part of existing workflows. But writing code is not the only part of the software development lifecycle, and what happens when you eliminate a bottleneck? Another takes it is place. Maybe it is the speed and capacity of the CI. Maybe it is design, approvals, specifications, and code reviews (yes, we need to and will get to a point where most human code review will end). Maybe the workflow does not change much but LLMs allow us to finally invest in automation which was cost-prohibitive before. If we do not look at all of our processes holistically and ruthlessly eliminate bottlenecks, we will not achieve our full potential. Often eliminating these bottlenecks will not only involve optimization of parts of our existing workflows but reworking and rethinking them altogether. This is phase 2, and we need to get there now.

The third reason is a collective action problem. Using LLMs effectively to write code is something an individual engineer can do for themselves. Rebuilding or optimizing the CI process for a whole team, business unit, or company is a much heavier lift, and it comes with opportunity costs and tradeoffs. Not impossible, and many people at Proton have done amazing things on their own, some of which have spread far and wide. But to retool the company at large requires amounts of both organization and resourcing that we simply have not invested in yet. Regarding the software development lifecycle discussion in the previous paragraph, in many cases we do not even know where the bottlenecks are because we have not invested in the tools necessary to find out. Some caution may have been warranted in the past — it took some time to figure out how to best use these new tools and we will continue to encourage experimentation. But it is past time to commit, as an organization, to the transformation that the moment requires.

So what does this mean for you, the engineer? Well, your agency and responsibilities have both expanded. Not only are you responsible for the work getting done, you also now own how it gets done, and therefore are responsible for continual optimization and maximal automation (and sharing those enhancements with your colleagues — success at Proton is a team sport). It is also your responsibility to flag and escalate needed improvements that you cannot execute on your own. Proton, for its part, will organize and resource the critical investments that are required to get through phase 2 and fully achieve the potential of the AI revolution.

The bottom line is that we are in a new world. “Programming” is dead. Engineering is not, nor is expertise. Your old job is gone. Your new job as a builder will let you do more and have more impact than you ever have, if you seize the opportunity. And Proton will set you up to do that, efforts you will hear more about in the coming days and weeks. The era of experimentation continues, but the time to act is now. The future is here — let’s make it ours.

Cover image by: Bernard Leonardo
Instagram: @dranreboel
Website: https://dranreboel.myportfolio.com/work

How to protect your privacy while traveling

Marcus Tsui — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:06:00 GMT

Travel creates a trail of personal data. A smartphone can reveal your location through mobile networks, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, apps, and background activity. Tickets and card payments can connect your identity to a journey, while cameras may record where you go. Even finding accommodation can mean handing over personal details.

Reducing that trail takes planning. You can leave your phone switched off, use cash, opt for paper tickets, carry offline entertainment, and choose privacy-focused tools when you need to use a computer. But each workaround comes with its own limits and public surveillance is difficult to avoid entirely.

The aim is to give away as little information as possible, while understanding what each choice costs in time, money, and convenience.

Leave your smartphone behind

A smartphone is one of the most persistent sources of location data that you carry and GPS is only part of the picture. Your device can communicate with mobile towers, Wi-Fi networks, and Bluetooth devices, while apps and online services may collect location and activity information in the background.

Over time, separate traces can reveal patterns: where you live and work, the places you visit, who you meet, and when you tend to be there. The concern is less about one isolated signal than the profile that can emerge when many records are linked.

For a trip where minimizing data collection is the priority, the simplest option is to switch the phone off and keep it isolated in a Faraday bag. This is a pouch designed to block wireless signals. A makeshift version using layers of metal foil can be unreliable if there are gaps, so it should not be treated as a guaranteed shield.

That said, leaving your phone behind has an immediate downside. You lose easy access to maps, messages, bookings, mobile payments, and live travel updates. A paper map and printed timetables can cover some of those needs, but you have to plan ahead and ask people for help when plans change.

Use cash and paper tickets where possible

A card payment can create a timestamped record linking a person to a merchant, location, amount, and time. That information may be held across several organizations, including the merchant, bank, card network, and payment processor. Paying with a phone or smartwatch can add another account or device to the transaction.

A series of purchases can reveal more than any one transaction. It may show where you stopped, how your route changed, and what kinds of places you visited. Cash reduces the digital record created at the point of purchase, and it can also help keep individual purchases out of loyalty-program profiles.

There are trade-offs though. Some businesses no longer accept cash, carrying it can be inconvenient, and you may need to withdraw more along the way. An ATM withdrawal is still recorded by your bank and may be captured on CCTV, so cash is not completely anonymous. It simply separates that withdrawal record from the details of each later purchase.

The same principle applies to transport. Buying a paper ticket at a counter and paying cash, when accepted, avoids some of the account, app, and payment data associated with booking online. But the journey itself may still be recorded by station and onboard cameras. Paper tickets reduce one part of the trail, not all of it.

Plan for the data trail around public transport

A bus can seem like a low-tech way to travel, but the surrounding systems may generate plenty of data. Journey-planning apps, live tracking, online tickets, and contactless payments can reveal where you are, where you intend to go, and when your plans change.

Printed timetables and maps are useful alternatives. Ask staff or local residents about routes and connections, and allow extra time for delays. This is less convenient than checking an app, but it avoids generating some location searches and account activity.

Trains create a more formal record of travel. A ticket can connect a route, destination, time, and payment method, while CCTV may capture you at the station and onboard. If you need to take a train, buying a paper ticket in person and paying cash where possible can reduce the amount of data tied directly to your identity. It will not, however, make your trip invisible.

Free public Wi-Fi can be tempting when you need to check a connection or find accommodation. Connecting may associate your device with a particular network and location, and a sign-in page can ask for identifying details. Poorly secured networks can also expose users to security risks. When possible, stay offline and use printed information or ask someone for help. If you do need to connect, avoid assuming that a network is trustworthy simply because it is free.

Find accommodation without oversharing

Accommodation can be one of the hardest parts of a low-data journey. Booking platforms may collect names, email addresses, phone numbers, payment details, IP addresses, and account activity. At the property, there may also be ID checks, CCTV, vehicle records, and guest Wi-Fi logins.

These records can connect your identity with your travel dates and where you are staying. They can also create risks if booking or hotel systems are compromised, since scammers may be able to use travel details to make fraudulent messages more convincing.

A lower-data approach is to consult a printed guide, contact properties directly, and ask what information they require before you arrive. Paying cash may be possible at some places, but it is increasingly common to encounter card-only policies or online booking requirements. Calling ahead can save time, although a public phone or someone else’s phone may be necessary if you have left your own device offline.

If a property asks for identification, read its privacy policy where available and ask how the information will be used, who can access it, and how long it will be retained. You do not need to assume every request is sinister. The point is to understand what you are handing over and avoid providing extra information without a clear reason.

Cameras can (and will) record your journey

Avoiding digital services does not mean avoiding surveillance. CCTV is common in stations, shops, car parks, and other public or privately managed spaces. A single camera sighting may reveal little by itself, but records can become more revealing when footage is linked across locations or combined with other information.

Some retailers also use live facial recognition to compare people entering a store against a watchlist. This raises a different concern from ordinary CCTV because the system attempts to identify a person in real time. Errors can have consequences, particularly if someone is challenged based on a mistaken match.

You cannot reliably opt out of cameras in public places. You can, however, make informed choices about where you shop and which services you use, while recognizing that avoiding one camera may mean taking a longer route or spending more time finding an alternative. Do not treat disguises or improvised signal-blocking methods as guarantees of anonymity.

Driving creates a different kind of data trail

A car may feel more private than public transport, but it brings its own records. Automated number plate recognition systems can capture vehicles on roads and in car parks. Hiring a car also links the journey to rental paperwork, identification, and payment information.

Connected vehicles may collect details about journeys and driving behavior, depending on the vehicle and its settings. Such information can sometimes be shared beyond the manufacturer or driver, including with third parties involved in insurance or data services. A vehicle can therefore reveal more than its location.

Taking a lift from someone you trust avoids the booking trail of a rental car, but it does not remove vehicle surveillance. Changing routes may reduce exposure to some cameras, though it cannot guarantee that a car will not be recorded somewhere else. The idea is to recognize the data associated with each option rather than assume one mode of transport is private by default.

Use a public computer carefully with Tails and Tor

Sometimes you need to get online to research a route, find a place to stay, or check essential information. A public computer can provide access without reconnecting your own smartphone, but it is still a shared device. You should avoid entering sensitive account details and should not assume the computer is safe simply because it is in a library or public space.

Tails is an operating system designed to run from a USB drive and leave as little trace as possible on the computer after use. It routes internet connections through Tor by default. This can be useful when you need a temporary computing environment, but it does not make every action anonymous. Signing into a personal account can identify you to that service, and the computer itself may not be trustworthy.

Tor sends internet traffic through multiple relays, making it harder for a website to see your real IP address. The Tor Browser also includes protections against some forms of tracking and browser fingerprinting. It is not a magic invisibility cloak: behavior that identifies you, logging into personal accounts, or unsafe downloads can undermine your privacy. Use the official Tor Browser and follow the Tor Project’s best practices.

Privacy means choosing your trade-offs

Traveling with a smaller data trail is possible, but complete anonymity is difficult in a world where payments, transport, accommodation, and public spaces are increasingly connected. Leaving a smartphone behind can cut out a major source of tracking, yet it also makes everyday tasks slower and less predictable. Cash helps at the checkout, but it cannot prevent CCTV or remove the record of an ATM withdrawal.

Decide which information you most want to protect, plan around the services you need, and make deliberate choices about when convenience is worth the data it creates. The goal is to reduce unnecessary exposure, not to assume that every trace can be erased.

Google can now use your data for ads: How to turn it off

Ben Wolford — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 16:27:07 GMT

For years, Google promised it wouldn’t use your emails, files, and photos to profile you for ad targeting. This month they gave themselves a way out of that promise.

On October 16, Google changed a sentence in its privacy policy that said your Gmail, Drive, and Photos content would not shape the ads you see. The sentence now has an exception spotted by Android Authority: If you connect those apps to Google’s Personal Intelligence features, that data can inform ads in Search.

If you’ve never connected your Google apps to Personal Intelligence, then nothing changes for you. But if you turn it on, then Google will turn your most private information into fodder for ads. For better privacy, you can disconnect the ad machine from Gmail or disconnect personalization entirely — or switch to privacy-first services. We show you how below.

Stop Google from scanning your files for Search ads

To stop connected Gmail and Google Photos data from reaching Search, disconnect those apps in your Google Account settings:

Open your Google Account and go to Data & privacy.
Under Personalization & activity, select Personalization settings.
Choose Manage Personalized Recommendations in Search Services.
Under Additional Personal Intelligence, find Connected Content apps.
Disconnect Google Workspace and Google Photos.

You can also turn off personalized recommendations entirely from the same Search Services personalization page. The easiest route is the Gemini settings for Personal Intelligence, where you can disable the connected apps. If you use Gemini, check both places. If you use Gmail’s built-in Gemini features, our guide to turning off Gemini in Gmail covers those separately.

Disconnecting does not erase what Google has already saved. Google’s help page says that disconnecting an app, or deleting the original email or photo, doesn’t remove data from your Search Services History, and that data can still be used for product improvement, including training generative AI models. To clear it, delete your Search Services History from your Google Account’s activity controls. You can also review your ad settings separately in My Ad Center.

If you’re in Europe: connecting apps has reportedly not been made available in the EU, the UK, or Switzerland. The privacy policy is a single global document, though, so the new wording covers you even where the feature isn’t live yet.

What the new policy wording allows

Google’s policy used to say it doesn’t show personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos. Since October 16, that sentence carries an exception for data you choose to make available to other Google services that support personalized ads. Google’s own example is Search processing the data you allow it to access to personalize content, including ads.

In a statement to Ars Technica, Google said “connecting your apps is entirely opt-in”. Google’s help page for Personal Intelligence uses tricky wording to explain how your Gmail will feed the ad machine: “Ads will not be based directly on your Gmail inbox or your Google Photos library.” If you connect your apps, Search may use summaries, excerpts, and inferences from them, and Google says that same information may be used to show you ads.

Ads are not the only use. The same help page says connected data may be used to improve Google services, including by training generative AI models, and that a subset of data processed by AI Mode is reviewed by human reviewers, including trained service providers. Google advises against connecting apps that hold confidential information you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see. Google has confirmed it is testing ads in AI Mode for people who connect their apps.

Google’s no-ads promise now has conditions

Google has said since 2017 that it won’t show ads based on Gmail messages. The sentence in its privacy policy about Drive, Gmail, and Photos was added in July 2021 and stayed the same through 17 versions of the policy, until October 1, 2026, according to PPC Land’s review of the policy archive.

Google launched Personal Intelligence on January 14, 2026. In March, the company said there were no ads for people who connect their apps with AI Mode, adding that this was not changing “right now.” The policy changed on October 16, about nine months after launch.

Store your data where the provider can’t read it

Personal Intelligence works because Google can read your email and photos. If Google instead used end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption, they couldn’t. A policy change alone wouldn’t give them access to the content.

That is how we built Proton Mail and Proton Drive. Your messages and files are encrypted so that we can’t read them. Our revenue comes from paid plans rather than ads, and we can’t scan your inbox or use your photos to train AI models.

If you want AI help without handing over your data, Lumo is our private AI assistant. It keeps no logs of your conversations, stores saved chats with zero-access encryption, and doesn’t use your chats to train its models.

Moving off Google is manageable in two steps:

Email and calendar: Easy Switch imports your Gmail messages and can forward future mail to your Proton inbox. Google Calendar events can be imported as well, as a one-time import.
Photos and files: Export them from Google with Google Takeout, then upload them to Proton Drive. Here’s how to switch from Google Photos to Proton Drive.

Learn more about Proton security here.

Guide to project tracking: Best techniques and tools for tracking projects

Jessica Bernard — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:03:35 GMT

Project tracking can quickly get out of hand without the right tools and strategies. Suddenly budgets don’t tally, key milestones are missed, and people don’t know what they’re responsible for completing. You need a project tracker.

We share why project tracking is important, how to tell if a project is meeting key metrics, and best practices to meet your deadline. You’ll also learn how to manage multiple projects simultaneously, even if you don’t have access to a dedicated project management software (hint: an online spreadsheet editor enables you to do exactly that).

What is project tracking?

Project tracking is the process of monitoring your project’s progress against your original plan. It involves tracking tasks, deadlines, budget, and resources to keep everything moving in the right direction. You can use project tracking at any scale, from managing family and home life to large commercial projects.

Why is tracking project progress important?

Trying to execute a project without tracking your progress is like building something without a measuring tape. You can eyeball it and hope for the best, but it’s pretty unlikely to work out well. Here’s how your project can benefit from tracking:

Catching problems before they escalate

Real-time visibility is essential, especially if your project has dependencies. Unblock team members, enable collaboration, and facilitate a bigger-picture approach. If you know your key milestones and when they need to be achieved, it’s easy to see when things fall off track. The earlier you catch a problem, the easier it is to address.

Making progress faster

“This meeting could have been an email” could just as easily be rephrased to “This meeting could have been a spreadsheet.” You can avoid lengthy status meetings if a glance at the project tracker shows who’s doing what and whether it’s on track.

Staying on budget

Your tracker should make it easy to see if your budget is anticipated to blow out. Tracking projects allows you to react quickly to keep the budget in check.

Key metrics every project tracker should include

Using established project management methodologies will give you the data you need to achieve your goals as efficiently as possible. To get the most out of your project tracker, you should include the following project management metrics:

Timeline and milestone tracker

Milestones represent major phase completions, such as prototype approval or design sign-off, rather than individual tasks. Plot your fixed dates and create a timeline anchored around key milestones. This enables you to easily see when things are off track, and it’s an opportunity to employ some project management jargon. Schedule variance (SV) is the difference between planned and actual progress at any given point.

Tracking milestones lets you calculate SV visually without complex formulas. For a spreadsheet setup, you can use conditional formatting to highlight incomplete milestones with a completion date that’s already passed. This flags slippage before it becomes a crisis.

Budget

Create a detailed budget that allows you to itemize and track expenses in real-time. Your tracker will need columns for estimated cost per task, actual cost per task, and a running total. For smaller projects, a simple comparison of estimated vs actual totals might be sufficient. For larger undertakings, you could consider adding some additional formatting.

If you’re going to take this to the next level, you can create a Cost Performance Index (CPI). This combines cost variance (whether you’re over or under budget) and burn rate (how quickly your funds are being consumed relative to the timeline) to give you a CPI value. Anything below 1.0 means you’re burning cash faster than you’re completing work, and it’s time to reassess.

Issues and risks log

Create a spreadsheet to identify known issues or risks. You’ll need two data points for each risk: first, rate the probability of each risk on a scale of 1-5, then rate impact severity on the same scale. You can then rank your issues by creating a risk scoring framework. This is calculated by multiplying probability x impact.

Risk scoring is standard practice in PMBOK and PRINCE2 and gives you a priority ranking that guides which issues need active monitoring and which you can observe passively. Once you’ve ranked your risks, you can also outline your mitigation strategies in the same document.

Task completion status

Create statuses that reflect your workflow (common categories include Not Started, In Progress, In Review, Done) and link tasks to phases or milestones. Once each task has a phase and a status, you can see the percent completed by phase by calculating the percentage of tasks marked Done in that phase. If you want to reflect the work that’s In Progress as well, you can assign it a partial value.

Stakeholder reporting becomes a lot easier when tasks are tied to milestones, and you can see which phases are dragging and whether milestone targets are realistic.

How to create a project tracker in a spreadsheet

While there are plenty of project management software options, you can set up powerful project tracking tools without expensive software. All you really need is a spreadsheet (and if your formula skills end at =SUM, some help from a business AI chat assistant).

Spreadsheets

Proton Sheets is ideal for budget tracking, project timelines, and resource allocation. Proton Sheets supports everything you’ll need: formulas, conditional formatting with custom rules, data validation dropdowns, frozen headers, charts, and more.

Create your own custom spreadsheet, then save a copy to use as a template. From there, you can create real-time status reports, individual task lists, and anything else that helps keep your project on track.

AI chat assistants

Not sure how best to structure your project tracking data? Ask Proton’s AI chat assistant for business, Lumo, to help create your ideal template. All conversations with Lumo are stored with zero-access encryption, so no one (not even Proton) can access them.

Cloud storage

Save all your relevant information in dedicated project folders in business cloud storage, such as Proton Drive. Your files, documents, and spreadsheets are stored securely on end-to-end encrypted cloud storage from Switzerland.

How to manage multiple projects at once

The good news is that managing several projects at once doesn’t mean multiplying your effort — you can simply duplicate and modify as needed. Give each project its own tab in your spreadsheet, built from the same template. If every project uses identical columns, statuses, and formulas, you never have to relearn where anything lives.

Add a roll-up dashboard on a separate tab that pulls headline figures from each project: percent complete, overdue task count, and budget status. These are simple cross-sheet formulas, and one row per project is enough to see at a glance where your attention is most needed.

Tip: Resist the urge to consolidate tasks from different projects into one giant task list. Context switching is fatiguing and inefficient, and separate tabs will keep individual projects legible.

5 tips for project tracking from a program manager at Proton

We asked a program manager at Proton how they keep complex, cross-team projects on track using nothing more than a well-built spreadsheet. Here’s what they told us.

1. Set up a single project tracking log

Start by breaking the project into milestones, then break each milestone into tasks. Use the header row to define exactly what you need to track for each one: milestone or task, owner, start date, due date, live date, status, and links to relevant documents.

The point is to keep everything in one sheet. When the tracker is the single source of truth, nobody has to dig through email or chat threads to find the latest version, and every question about the project has one place to go for an answer.

2. Track your completion rate over time

Spreadsheet formulas only show the current value. Your percent complete today overwrites what it was last week, so you lose the history that tells you whether the project is speeding up or stalling.

Fix this with a simple log table. Add two minutes to your weekly standup to record that week’s percent complete. After a few weeks, the log becomes a trend line that shows progress at a glance. It also doubles as your status report, so you’re not writing one from scratch every Friday.

3. Build a Gantt-style timeline with conditional formatting

You don’t need dedicated project management software to get a timeline view. Lay out columns as weeks or days, then add conditional formatting rules that shade each cell based on the task’s start and end dates.

Because the shading is driven by the dates, the timeline updates itself whenever a date changes. There’s nothing to redraw. Add a second rule that highlights overdue tasks in a different color, and slipping deadlines will stand out the moment they happen, not at the next review.

4. Store the sheet in a shared Drive folder

A tracker only works if everyone is looking at the same copy. Keep it in a Proton Drive folder shared with the project team, so every collaborator works from one end-to-end encrypted file instead of downloaded duplicates.

Set permissions to match each person’s role: owners as editors, stakeholders as viewers. You can apply these at the file or folder level. If something changes unexpectedly, version history shows you who changed what and when, and lets you roll back if needed.

5. Use data validation to keep your data clean

Free-text fields are where trackers fall apart. One person types “In progress,” another types “in prog,” a third types “ongoing”. Suddenly your filters miss half the tasks and your status charts are wrong.

Add dropdown menus to your status, priority, and owner columns using data validation. When people pick from a fixed list, your data stays consistent, so sorting, filtering, and any status-based formulas or charts stay accurate as the project grows.

Start simple, then build

You don’t need all five at once. Start with a single tracking log and dropdowns for status, since those two alone will eliminate most of the confusion. Add the completion log and timeline view once the basics are in place.

FAQ on project tracking

What’s the difference between project tracking and project management?

Project management covers the full discipline: scoping, planning, resourcing, and executing a project. Project tracking is one ongoing component of that process — monitoring progress against your plan so tasks, deadlines, budget, and risks stay visible. You can track a project without dedicated project management software; the discipline matters more than the tool.

How do I manage multiple projects without dedicated project management tools?

Structure is what makes multi-project tracking possible, not software. Build each project as its own tab using the same template — identical columns, statuses, and formulas — then create a dashboard tab with one row per project pulling percent complete, overdue tasks, and budget status. Consistent structure means your effort scales across projects without multiplying.

What free tools can I use for project management tracking?

A spreadsheet app paired with business cloud storage covers most project tracking needs. Formulas, conditional formatting, data validation, and charts for tracking; encrypted storage for your files and folders.

Proton Sheets and Proton Drive offer both with end-to-end encryption, and Proton’s business AI assistant, Lumo, can help you build your tracking template from scratch.

What should a project tracker include?

At minimum, a project tracker should include a timeline with key milestones, an itemized budget, an issues and risks log, and task completion statuses linked to project phases. Together, these give you the core metrics (schedule variance, budget position, and percent complete by phase) that show whether a project is on track.

Can I use a spreadsheet for project tracking?

Yes, a spreadsheet supports everything essential to project tracking, including tasks lists with statuses and owners, deadlines with automatic overdue flagging, budget columns with running totals, and charts for visualizing progress. Spreadsheets work especially well for small to medium projects, and a well-built one can be saved as a template for reuse across your team.

Lumo can now turn your ideas into creations

Elena Atencio — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:31:25 GMT

Lumo can now create documents, code, and interactive web pages in a canvas alongside your chat. Ask it to draft a report, help with coding, or even create an early 2000s-style video game. Then keep working on it without leaving the conversation.

Whether you’re developing proprietary code or an unpublished manuscript, you should control what happens to your work. Lumo never logs your conversations or uses them to train models. Your creations are protected with zero-access encryption, so even Proton can’t read them.

A workspace alongside your conversation

Previously, a report or code lived inside a chat reply. Working through revisions meant scrolling between messages and finding the version you wanted to use. A few rounds of changes could leave you hunting for your own work.

The new canvas gives that work a dedicated view with your conversation beside it. You can look at what Lumo made while discussing what to change.

How Lumo generates and displays creations

Lumo is instructed to distinguish between conversational answers and creations you’re likely to keep or revise. Questions and explanations generally stay in chat, while requests for a report, code file, or web page can open the canvas.

When Lumo generates a creation, it includes structured information identifying the content type. The app uses this to choose the appropriate view, from formatted text for documents to interactive preview for web pages.

This happens automatically. You can disable it for a conversation from Tools in the chat box or in Settings.

Make changes and compare versions

A first draft usually needs another pass. Ask Lumo to make changes in the conversation, or select content in the canvas for a more specific request. In a document, highlight a passage and describe what you want: “cut this paragraph in half” or “make this less formal.” In code, select a section and choose Improve or Explain.

You can also edit documents yourself, using the formatting controls or switching to Markdown source. Other creation types are revised through Lumo.

Each revision from Lumo or saved manual edit creates a new version. If a change doesn’t work, you can look back at what came before. Earlier versions remain available to review, copy, download, or save to Proton Drive. Further edits happen on the latest version.

Find your creations across conversations

Open Library → Creations to find what you’ve made across conversations. Selecting a creation takes you back to its original chat with the latest version open.

Making this work across chats introduced a technical challenge as the Library needs to show what you’ve created, without our servers being able to read your conversations.

Lumo saves a separate encrypted copy of each creation’s latest version. To our servers, it’s an unreadable encrypted file. Your device decrypts the information needed to display it in the Library, while earlier versions remain in your encrypted conversation history.

Export runs on your device

The same privacy considerations shaped export. When you’re ready to take a document out of Lumo, export conversion happens on your device. Conversion happens on your device, avoiding the need to send your creation’s unencrypted content to an additional backend.

Word files are generated locally from the document’s Markdown structure. And PDF downloads use the browser’s print dialog.

We considered generating server-side PDFs on a server, but would mean sending your document’s unencrypted content to another backend. We ruled it out.

Keeping conversion local comes with a tradeoff. Save to Drive → PDF currently produces image-based document PDFs without selectable text. If you need selectable text, save through the browser print dialog, then upload the file to Drive.

We’ll keep improving export options as you use them and share feedback.

Get started

Creations are available now for all Lumo users.

Presentations are coming soon, too. We’re still working on getting the slides right before putting them in your hands.

The things you make with AI can include work you aren’t ready to share: a draft proposal, unpublished code, or an idea still taking shape. Creations get the same zero-access encryption as your saved conversations. We never log your chats or use them to train models. What you bring to Lumo, and what Lumo makes for you, stays yours.

Try Lumo

Meta ordered to pay $25 billion over Cambridge Analytica privacy case

Edward Komenda — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:58:55 GMT

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for misleading Facebook users about how it protected their personal information.

It’s the largest penalty ever imposed on the company and five times the $5 billion fine the US Federal Trade Commission handed Facebook in 2019.

The case dates back to Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy that harvested data from as many as 87 million Facebook profiles through a personality quiz and used it to target ads in the 2016 US presidential election.

How New Mexico got to the $25 billion Meta penalty

New Mexico sued in 2021, arguing that Facebook told users they were in control of their own information while failing to explain how third parties could access it. In September 2026, a jury found Meta responsible for more than 40 million violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act.

At up to $5,000 per violation, the maximum was nearly $220 billion. The state asked for up to $40 billion. Meta proposed between $345 million and $3.45 billion. District Judge Francis Mathew set the penalty at $25 billion, plus 15% annual interest until Meta pays. Meta argued the state never showed consumers were harmed and plans to appeal.

New Mexico was the only state to take its Cambridge Analytica claims to trial. In August 2026, 46 other states and two territories settled theirs for about $459 million, as part of a $17 billion settlement with Meta that mostly covered teen safety. New Mexico’s penalty is more than 50 times that amount.

Facebook users won’t see the money because, under New Mexico law, consumer protection penalties fund public education.

The Cambridge Analytica pattern hasn’t gone away

The privacy claims in the New Mexico case centered on the gap between what Meta told users about their data and how it actually handled that data. The state also challenged Meta’s statements about fighting hate speech and misinformation and applying its community standards evenly. That privacy gap is far from an isolated incident, as Meta has faced a long string of controversies over its data practices, privacy protections, and treatment of users:

A former Meta product manager alleged the company used internal data matching to get around Apple’s tracking rules, which Meta denied.
Users reported that Meta AI was scanning their camera rolls without explicit consent.
Internal documents showed Meta’s platforms had become a hotspot for scam ads.
Meta began using AI chats to personalize ads.
Instagram dropped end-to-end encryption for direct messages.
Meta’s Muse AI agent shared a Marketplace seller’s home address with a buyer without asking.

What does Meta’s 25 billion penalty mean for Facebook privacy settings?

The penalty doesn’t change how Facebook handles your data today, and an appeal could take years. Our privacy checklist for Meta apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads shows how to reduce tracking and limit targeted ads. You can also limit what Meta AI learns about you or delete your Facebook account altogether.

The $25 billion penalty sends a clear warning to Big Tech: Breaking privacy promises can come at a steep cost. But even a ruling this significant won’t change the business model built on collecting and monetizing people’s data.

Manage team access easily with new Admin roles and SCIM for groups

Raphael Auphan — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:21:29 GMT

Today, we’re proud to announce two new features that give you greater access control without the manual overhead: Admin roles and SCIM for groups. Admin roles let you delegate admin responsibilities for more granular, secure control over your organization, while SCIM for groups enable you to provision access to groups through your identity provider for a more seamless way to manage your teams.

Managing access at any organization can be tedious and time-consuming. Admins need to grant the right permissions quickly, and revoke them just as fast when roles change or someone leaves. But beyond the resources and effort involved, this can also risk compromising security if something slips through the cracks — especially for fast-growing and larger teams. Our new features are designed to address this to keep your business moving effectively and efficiently.

Enjoy more granular access control with Admin roles

Permissions for organizations in Proton for Business were built around Administrators and Users, giving organizations a clear, simple way to separate full administrative control from everyday use. But we recognize that this alone isn’t always granular enough for certain teams and businesses, such as when an employee needs specific responsibilities without everything else that comes with full admin access.

Admin roles build on that model with role-based access control (RBAC), giving you more control over who can do what. You can now assign specific roles to individual users or entire groups:

Organization Admin keeps full control over the organization.
User Admin manages users, like adding new addresses or assigning groups, without touching security policy.
Security Admin manages security settings and reviews logs, without broader administrative reach.
User remains the default role for everyone else.

Assign a role to a group once, and everyone in it inherits that role automatically. Group member additions or removals also mean their access gets updated instantly. Access management now scales with how your organization is actually structured, instead of a binary all-or-nothing approach or requiring a one-by-one update every time a team changes.

Admin roles are available now across all Professional plans and Workspace bundles.

Manage teams more efficiently with SCIM for groups

Proton’s existing SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) integration already synced users automatically from your identity provider (IdP), enabling user changes to be reflected across both systems without needing to manually replicate each one. However, groups still had to be created and maintained by hand inside Proton. Every time someone joined a team, switched departments, or left the company, an admin had to update Proton separately. Now, that’s no longer necessary on Proton Pass and Proton VPN.

With SCIM for groups, Proton’s SCIM integration has been extended to provision groups, not just individual users. Group names and membership changes now sync automatically from Microsoft Entra or Okta into Proton Pass and Proton VPN. Make that change once on your IdP and it’ll be reflected on the appropriate Proton app, with no separate list to maintain.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Add someone to a group in the IdP, and they automatically gain access to everything that group is entitled to in Proton, whether it’s a shared Pass vault or a VPN gateway.
Remove someone from an IdP group, and their Proton access updates automatically — no manual cleanup required.

Proton groups created this way are managed and controlled at the IdP, not inside Proton. This keeps your identity provider as the single source of truth and reduces manual effort, so there’s no risk of the two ever falling out of sync.

SCIM for groups is available now on the following plans: Pass Professional, VPN Professional, and the VPN and Pass Professional bundle.

Get started today

Both admin roles and SCIM for groups are now live.

Admin roles are available on all Professional plans and Workspace bundles, so you can start assigning users and groups granular roles straightaway — ensuring the right people get the right level of access.

SCIM for groups is supported for Proton Pass or Proton VPN. If you have SSO and SCIM already set up, this means you no longer need to manage groups manually on Proton. Group membership changes at your IdP are automatically reflected in Proton, so group provisioning is ready to configure directly from your Entra or Okta admin console.

Explore our Professional and Workspace plans to find the right tier for your organization, or if you need help, speak to our sales team today to learn which Proton plan is best for you.

Get Proton for Business

The best private browsers, tested

Marcus Tsui — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 18:02:04 GMT

Chrome is convenient, fast, and compatible with almost every website. But if online privacy matters to you, it’s worth considering what happens behind the scenes, including how your browser handles tracking, and who controls the technology it runs on.

Five alternatives offer different approaches: Brave, Vivaldi, Firefox, Librewolf, and Zen. Some prioritize blocking trackers, others focus on independence from Google, and a few make privacy-conscious browsing easier without requiring much adjustment.

To compare them, we scored each across three categories:

Independence from Google,
Fingerprinting protection, and
Everyday usability.

Each is scored out of 10, for a maximum total of 30.

How independent are they from Google?

A browser’s underlying engine affects how it works, how websites behave, and who develops its core technology. Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome and several alternatives. Firefox uses Mozilla’s Gecko engine, which provides an independent foundation.

The results

Brave: 4/10. Brave uses Chromium. It adds its own privacy protections, but still relies on technology developed within Google’s browser ecosystem.
Vivaldi: 4/10. Vivaldi also uses Chromium. Its extensive customization options set it apart, but its underlying engine has the same connection to Google.
Firefox: 7/10. Firefox uses Gecko, giving it technical independence from Chromium. However, Mozilla has historically received substantial revenue from Google for default search placement, creating a financial dependency.
LibreWolf: 9/10. Built on Firefox, LibreWolf removes telemetry and applies privacy-focused changes while retaining Gecko’s independent foundations.
Zen: 9/10. Zen also builds on Firefox and reduces telemetry. It offers a different interface without adopting Chromium.

Winners: LibreWolf and Zen, tied at 9/10. Both combine an independent browser engine with privacy-focused changes. Firefox is another option if you prefer something more established.

Which offers the best fingerprinting protection?

Cookies aren’t the only way websites can recognize you. Browser fingerprinting combines characteristics such as your screen resolution, installed fonts, and browser configuration to create a profile that may help identify you across visits.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cover Your Tracks tool lets you test how your browser appears to trackers. It’s a useful starting point, although no single test captures every fingerprinting technique.

The results

Brave: 10/10. Brave comes out on top thanks to fingerprint randomization, which changes certain browser characteristics to make it harder to link activity across visits.
LibreWolf: 8/10. Its privacy-focused defaults and tracking protections offer a strong level of defence against common tracking methods.
Firefox: 5/10. Firefox includes fingerprinting protections, but its score in this comparison falls short of Brave and LibreWolf. Mozilla continues to develop these protections, so results can change between versions.
Zen: 5/10. Zen benefits from Firefox’s foundations, but may lag behind Firefox’s newest privacy protections as the project develops.
Vivaldi: 5/10. Despite using Chromium, Vivaldi scores lowest in this category, falling well behind Brave’s approach to fingerprint randomization.

Winner: Brave, at 10/10. Its fingerprint randomization makes it the strongest performer in this comparison. Still, fingerprinting protection doesn’t guarantee anonymity, and results depend on the browser version and test conditions.

Which is the easiest to use?

Privacy settings only help if you can live with them. A browser that repeatedly breaks websites or clears your preferences may become frustrating, while one that works much like your current browser can make switching easier.

The results

Firefox: 9/10. Firefox handles most everyday tasks well. Some websites optimized for Chrome can occasionally behave differently.
Brave: 9/10. Its familiar interface, Chromium compatibility, and built-in privacy features make it a relatively straightforward switch for Chrome users.
Vivaldi: 8/10. Vivaldi offers extensive customization and encrypted bookmark synchronization. The range of settings can take time to learn, but it suits people who like controlling their browser experience.
Zen: 8/10. Sidebar tabs and Spaces provide a distinctive way to organize browsing. As a younger project, Zen can still have occasional rough edges.
LibreWolf: 5/10. Its defaults can clear browsing data when you close the browser, which may mean logging into websites again. You can adjust some settings, but doing so involves trade-offs.

Winners: Firefox and Brave, tied at 9/10. Both combine strong everyday usability with relatively few compromises.

Which browser wins?

Brave takes the top spot, thanks largely to its fingerprinting protection and ease of use. LibreWolf is a strong alternative if you’re willing to trade convenience for privacy, while Firefox offers a comfortable middle ground. Zen brings a fresh look to Firefox, and Vivaldi is for people who like to tinker.

Browser	Google independence	Fingerprinting	Usability	Total
Brave	4/10	10/10	9/10	23/30
LibreWolf	9/10	8/10	5/10	22/30
Zen	9/10	5/10	8/10	22/30
Firefox	7/10	5/10	9/10	21/30
Vivaldi	4/10	2/10	8/10	14/30

Which browser should you choose?

Choose Brave for the strongest overall balance. It combines excellent fingerprinting protection with a familiar browsing experience, although its Chromium foundation makes it less independent from Google.

Choose LibreWolf if privacy comes first. Its privacy-focused defaults and independent engine are appealing, provided you’re comfortable with extra friction.

Choose Firefox for everyday flexibility. It offers a balance of independence and usability, while Zen is worth considering if you want Firefox’s foundations with a different interface.

Choose Vivaldi if you value customization.

There’s no universal winner for every person or threat model. Pick the browser that fits your priorities, keep it updated, and test its protections rather than relying on its reputation alone.

Data brokers are selling your profile. Here’s how to use the GDPR to stop them.

Marina Pereda — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 12:01:47 GMT

Spanish YouTuber Carles Tamayo has touched a nerve again, in his usual informal, funny, and pointed style. In the final episode of Se nos ha ido de las manos (“It’s gotten out of hand”), a documentary series that premiered on Spanish public television in April 2026, he looks at how companies buy and sell personal data.

The episode, titled El activo eres tú (“You’re the asset”), puts an uncomfortable question on the table: Who has our data, and what is being done to it? And what are we willing to give up in return for the promise of something free? After getting spam calls from companies that knew too much about him, Tamayo turned his own production company into a data broker to see from the inside how personal data is collected and traded.

Here’s how the data broker business works, and what rights the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) gives you.

What a data broker is, and how they make money
What cookies are and what they’re for
How the GDPR protects you
How to use your GDPR rights against data brokers
Limit what data brokers can collect in the first place

What a data broker is, and how they make money

A data broker is a company that collects, analyzes, and sells information about people and organizations. What makes that information valuable to buyers is how it can be combined and analyzed. Habits, interests, location data, and other signals can be stitched together, increasingly with the help of AI, into something usable. Data brokers sell the raw material that makes it possible to build a profile of almost anyone.

In Tamayo’s report, for example, one data broker offers him information on people who have recently had a baby. Those new parents had handed over their details at the hospital in exchange for entry into a prize draw for newborn products.

Data brokers typically collect email addresses, IP addresses, approximate location, online purchases, internet searches, interests selected inside an app, and the devices someone uses.

Ever had a call from a phone company (or any company) and wondered where they got your number? It’s simpler than you think. Cookies, mobile apps, and online forms can gather your information and pass it to data brokers. So can offline sources, such as loyalty cards, prize draws, and public records.

What cookies are and what they’re for

You’ve seen them on every website you visit: a small pop-up asking you to accept or reject cookies. You probably skim it, accept cookies and move on, without ever asking what cookies actually are or what you just agreed to let companies do with your data.

Cookies are small files that a website stores in your browser to remember information about your visit. The ones data brokers care about are advertising cookies, designed to build behavioral profiles and serve personalized ads.

But you can now be tracked by methods that go well beyond cookies. Browser fingerprinting, for instance, creates a unique signature from the characteristics of your device, while cross-site tracking follows your activity as you move between websites. On mobile, advertising IDs do something similar by tying your behavior to a persistent identifier.

Rejecting cookies improves your privacy, but it doesn’t fully guarantee it. And once you start asking where your data goes, who holds it, and how it gets used, you inevitably run into the question of whether trading in your data is legal at all.

The GDPR is the European Union rulebook governing how organizations and companies collect, use, share, and store the personal data of anyone in the EU. It also applies to companies based outside the EU that target people there. In Spain, compliance is overseen by the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD), which also handles complaints when a company breaches these rights.

The GDPR establishes several fundamental rights:

Right of access: Find out what personal data a company holds about you, what it’s using it for, who it has shared it with, and where it got it. You can also request a copy.

Right to rectification: Have incorrect or out-of-date information corrected.

Right to erasure: Known as the “right to be forgotten,” this lets you request that your data be deleted when the company no longer needs it, when you withdraw consent or object to its use, or when it was processed unlawfully.

Right to object: Refuse certain kinds of processing, such as the use of your data for advertising. For direct marketing, this right is absolute: once you object, the company must stop.

Right to data portability: Receive the personal data you gave a company in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format so you can move it to another service provider. This applies when the company processes your data based on your consent or a contract, by automated means.

The GDPR gives people enforceable rights, backed by fines, yet many people don’t realize they can exercise these rights free of charge. A company can charge a fee or refuse only when a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

As Tamayo’s report shows, there’s a wide gap between the guarantees the law offers and what the average citizen knows about protecting their personal information. That gap makes it harder for people to use the legal tools available to them and take back control of their data.

How to use your GDPR rights against data brokers

The rights above only work if you use them. None of them needs a lawyer or a special form: an email to the company’s privacy contact is enough.

Ask where your data came from. If a company contacts you and you never gave it your details, ask it for its source. Under the right of access, it has to tell you, and that answer often leads straight to a data broker.

Send an access request. Ask the company or broker what data it holds about you, what it uses it for, and who it has shared it with, and ask for a copy. The request is free, and the company must reply within one month. It can extend that by two more months for complex requests, but it has to tell you.

Object and ask for erasure. In the same email, you can object to your data being used for marketing and ask for it to be deleted. The company must also pass the deletion on to anyone it shared your data with, unless that’s impossible or would take disproportionate effort.

Sign up for the Lista Robinson. In Spain, companies that send direct marketing must check this advertising opt-out list before contacting you. Signing up is free.

Complain to the AEPD. If a company ignores you, refuses without a valid reason, or misses the deadline, you can file a free complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency.

Limit what data brokers can collect in the first place

Your GDPR rights clean up what’s already out there. A few simple habits reduce how much new data reaches brokers.

Review your app permissions and switch off any access an app doesn’t need to work, especially the ones with access to your location, contacts, or photos.

Reject non-essential cookies. On EU websites, rejecting should be as easy as accepting, and it blocks the advertising cookies that feed behavioral profiles.

Stay signed out of websites and services when you’re only browsing. When you’re signed in to Google, YouTube, Amazon, or a news site, everything you search, watch, read, or buy is tied to your account. Browsing while signed out gives companies less to connect to you.

Use a privacy-focused browser such as Firefox or Brave, which block many trackers by default. You can also explore European alternative web browsers focused on privacy.

Switch to Proton Mail, our private and secure email service that can’t read your emails and doesn’t scan your inbox for ads, tracking, or surveillance. It also blocks tracking pixels, which marketers typically use to see when you open a message (plus other indicators).

Use a VPN to hide your IP address from websites, apps, and ad networks, so they can’t use it to estimate your location or link your activity across websites. Proton VPN also has a feature called NetShield, which blocks ads and trackers before they load. It has an independently audited no-logs policy, so it doesn’t keep a record of what you do online.

Use an encrypted password manager to create strong, unique passwords, so one breached account doesn’t expose the rest. Proton Pass also gives you hide-my-email aliases for newsletters, prize draws, and online shops. If one starts getting spam, you can see who may have shared or leaked it, then disable the alias.

As Tamayo’s report makes clear, data brokers are part of a business model built on our data. But the GDPR and the tools that protect our privacy give us ways to take back control. The goal isn’t to disappear from the internet but to be intentional about who is allowed to access our data and for what reason.