Keep me signed in
We recommend you stay signed in to your Proton Account on trusted devices. In this article, we explain why. This should only be done on devices that only you have access to. Leaving your account signed in on a public device or one that you don’t trust can put your information at risk.
How to stay signed in
To stay signed in to your Proton Account, ensure the Keep me signed in checkbox is ticked when you sign in to your account (for example, at account.proton.me).
Reasons to stay signed in on trusted devices
If you are using a device you trust, such as your laptop that no one else can access, we recommend you stay signed in to your Proton Account. There are two reasons for this:
1. Session persistence
Staying signed in to your account allows session persistence. This means that if you close and reopen your browser, you will remain signed in to your Proton Account.
If you did not enable Keep me signed in, you will need to sign in to your account again when you reopen the browser. This can mean confirming your two-factor authentication(new window) (if you have it enabled, which we recommend) as well.
On most operating systems, you Close your browser when you click the X button or close all tabs. On macOS, you must fully Quit the browser(new window).
2. Device data recovery
Keep me signed in is required for device data recovery to work.
Learn more about device data recovery
Not your device?
If you are using a device you don’t trust (most likely because it’s not yours), you should ensure the Keep me signed in checkbox is not ticked when you sign in to your Proton Account (for example, at account.proton.me).
If you don’t, whoever uses the browser after you will have full access to your Proton Account, thanks to session persistence.
In fact, for maximum security, we strongly recommend only accessing your Proton Account using your browser’s private or incognito mode on untrusted devices.
This is because using a browser in regular (non-incognito) mode leaves behind a great deal of personal information, including information that could be used to access your Proton Account. Information normally stored by your browser includes:
- Websites visited
- Passwords used
- Information entered into forms
- Permissions you have given to websites
- Cookies and other site data (such as files stored in your browser’s web storage(new window), including the index file used by our encrypted search message content feature(new window)).
Learn how to access Proton Mail in Private Browsing (Incognito) mode(new window)