Collaborate Securely: How to Use Proton Drive for File Sharing

Sharing files is a fundamental part of work and life, but it comes with risks. Emailing attachments can be insecure, and using mainstream cloud services often means granting them access to your data. Proton Drive provides a solution with its easy-to-use, secure, and private file-sharing features.

Because of its end-to-end encryption, sharing from Proton Drive is fundamentally more secure than with other services. Here’s how to do it.

How to Share Files and Folders Securely

Proton Drive gives you granular control over how you share your data. The core of this system is the secure link.

1. Select Your File or Folder: From the Proton Drive web or mobile app, find the file or folder you wish to share.
2. Generate a Sharing Link: Click the “Share” or “Get link” option. This creates a unique, encrypted link. By default, only you can access this link.
3. Enable Public Access: To share it, you must enable public access for the link. This is an explicit step, ensuring you never share files by accident.

Once the link is public, anyone with the link can view or download the file or folder. But Proton Drive gives you more control than that.

Add a Layer of Protection with a Password

For more sensitive files, you should always enable the password protection feature.

• Set a Password: When creating your sharing link, you can toggle the “Password protect” option and set a strong password.
• Share Securely: You can now send the link via one channel (e.g., email) and the password via another, more secure channel (e.g., a signal message or in person). This ensures that even if the link is intercepted, the file remains inaccessible without the password.

Control Access with an Expiration Date

How many times have you sent a link and forgotten it’s still active months or years later? This can be a significant security risk.

Proton Drive solves this by allowing you to set an expiration date for your shared links. You can set the link to expire in a day, a week, a month, or on a custom date. Once the date passes, the link automatically becomes invalid, protecting your data from unintended future access.

Key Benefits of Sharing with Proton Drive

• End-to-End Encryption: The file is encrypted before it leaves your device and is only decrypted when the recipient opens it.
• Zero-Access Architecture: Proton never has access to the files you’re sharing.
• Full Control: You decide who can access your files and for how long.
• Ease of Use: Sharing is intuitive and integrated directly into the app, making it easy to be secure.

By using these features, you can collaborate and share files with confidence, knowing that your data is protected by a system designed for privacy from the ground up.