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Ask HN: Is Proton Mail Down?

15 points by pythux ↗ HN
Getting this error for a while now but their status page (https://status.proton.me/) doesn't show any issue so far:

"Something went wrong We couldn't load this page. Please refresh the page or check your internet connection. Error: Servers are unreachable. Please try again in a few minutes"

15 comments

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blomback
I’m having troubles as well using the iOS app(s)
pythux
I can confirm that both web client and iOS apps cannot connect to servers at this point. There was a server outage earlier today, not sure if it's related.
roomey
Yes, it appears down using bridge, webapp and mobile
pythux
Update on the status page as of 16h10 CET:

"Technical difficulties Investigating - We are currently experiencing intermittent network issues affecting some of our users. We are working to fully restore services as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience. Jan 09, 2025 - 16:10 CET"

This seems to impact VPN, Calendar, etc.

eth0up
It has a ddos-y kinda fee to me. I guess we'll know eventually.
eth0up
Has been down on Android for several hours.

To anyone from Proton: It would, perhaps, be a good idea to implement a notice in the app version, giving some form of clue when this happens. It's easy to hit send and carry on, and not realize there's an issue.

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Malidir
They are getting a lot of 'feedback' on X :)

(and I imagine all other social media)

Malidir
Guys just a reminder - best to get your own domain and use that for your email rather than using proton.com/gmail.com/outlook.com etc

That way worst case you can switch it to another email provider/self-host.

Numerlor
Is there some way of having a backup for relatively short outages like this on a single domain? From what I understand DNS entries for mail and mail security block quickly switching providers temporarily right?
gck1
Proton's target audience are folks who care about privacy and at least a few bits of anonymity. Using your own domain will make you stand out like a sore thumb across all services you sign up to.
cedws
You’re not wrong, but many Proton customers are also just suckers who fell for the marketing without understanding any of the tech or limitations of the service. I say this as a Proton customer myself.
cedws
I want to do that, but I also want many aliases without buying many domains that are ultimately tied back to me by ICANN WHOIS. + aliases and catch-all rules are not really a solution for this because if it’s all on one domain it’s all linkable to one identity.

I’ve also considered using a service like Njalla, but they’re expensive and you need to trust they won’t run away with your domains.