Proton Mail: Difference between revisions

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As of 2025 many users continue to voice their concerns regarding the inactive account policy, while advocating for sensible measures such as deleting only the contents in the inactive accounts while sparing the accounts themselves.<ref>https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/48235556-inactive-account-policy-keep-account-when-deleti</ref><ref>https://proton.me/support/inactive-accounts</ref>

The Proton team has stated on Reddit that the inactivity account policy aims to "manage their resources in a sustainable way", which can be translated into "reducing operating costs". In the comments, it was noted that retaining the accounts themselves indefinitely and only purging their contents would not noticably increase operating costs compared to deleting the account given that login information is all that has to be stored. ProtonMail also does not allow registering email accounts with the same address as deleted email accounts, which is only possible because they keep the deleted email addresses in their records.<ref>[https://archive.today/2025.10.05-160133/https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1bzt1ka/protons_new_policy_for_free_inactive_accounts/ Proton's New Policy for Free Inactive Accounts : ProtonMail] - Reddit</ref>

== Data portability ==

Until around 2023, there was no way for users without a paid subscription to create local backups of all of their emails at once ([[data lock-in]]). Paying users could use the Proton Mail Bridge to download their emails through the IMAP protocol using an external client such as Thunderbird or Outlook, where as free users were limited to downloading each email individually, making it impractical for backup purposes.<ref>[https://archive.today/2020.06.12-083856/https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/export-import-emails/ How to export and import emails - ProtonMail Support]</ref>

Since around 2023, Proton Technologies provides an export tool that anyone can use.<ref>[https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-export-tool How to export and restore emails using the Proton Mail Export Tool]</ref>

==References==

[[Category:Proton]]

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 As of 2025 many users continue to voice their concerns regarding the inactive account policy, while advocating for sensible measures such as deleting only the contents in the inactive accounts while sparing the accounts themselves.<ref>https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/48235556-inactive-account-policy-keep-account-when-deleti</ref><ref>https://proton.me/support/inactive-accounts</ref>
+The Proton team has stated on Reddit that the inactivity account policy aims to "manage their resources in a sustainable way", which can be translated into "reducing operating costs". In the comments, it was noted that retaining the accounts themselves indefinitely and only purging their contents would not noticably increase operating costs compared to deleting the account given that login information is all that has to be stored. ProtonMail also does not allow registering email accounts with the same address as deleted email accounts, which is only possible because they keep the deleted email addresses in their records.<ref>[https://archive.today/2025.10.05-160133/https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1bzt1ka/protons_new_policy_for_free_inactive_accounts/ Proton's New Policy for Free Inactive Accounts : ProtonMail] - Reddit</ref>
+== Data portability ==
+Until around 2023, there was no way for users without a paid subscription to create local backups of all of their emails at once ([[data lock-in]]). Paying users could use the Proton Mail Bridge to download their emails through the IMAP protocol using an external client such as Thunderbird or Outlook, where as free users were limited to downloading each email individually, making it impractical for backup purposes.<ref>[https://archive.today/2020.06.12-083856/https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/export-import-emails/ How to export and import emails - ProtonMail Support]</ref>
+Since around 2023, Proton Technologies provides an export tool that anyone can use.<ref>[https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-export-tool How to export and restore emails using the Proton Mail Export Tool]</ref>
 ==References==
 <references />
 [[Category:Proton]]