If you really think about it, not even our digital calendars are safe from eyes that seek to bring us targeted advertising. It’s probably the cost of using free apps and services but does this mean we just have to settle for that “payment”? If you’re a user of the encrypted ProtonMail, you’ll be happy to know that they are now introducing a beta version of their equally-encrypted ProtonCalendar. While it’s only available for the web for now, pretty soon it will also come to Android devices.
The developers of ProtonCalendar say it’s the first fully encrypted calendar app that will make all your appointments and schedules just between you and your device and whoever you wanted to share it with. All your information, including event title, description, location, and participants, is protected by end-to-end encryption so that before it even reachers the servers of the app, your privacy is secured. You will be safe from prying authoritarian regimes and those that seek to sell you ads based on your details.
With this beta version, you’ll be able to create and delete events, set reminders, and get events to repeat on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. What you will see now is pretty basic, except for the encryption part of course. But they do plan to make it more substantial as the beta continues, with upcoming features like sharing your calendar with other users you trust and sending invites to non-ProtonMail users.
As you know by now if you’ve been using the ProtonMail app, there is a free tier with limited features but if you want to make the most out of it, you need to be subscribed to one of their paid plans. And if you want to check out the ProtonCalendar app in beta, you will need to have any of their paid plans. You’ll see the calendar on the sidebar once you log in. If you don’t have an account yet, you can sign up, but again, the free version won’t let you check out the calendar.
There’s no news yet when the beta version will be available for Android, but they did say it’s sometime in 2020. There’s also no timeline yet for when we can expect the beta version.