When it comes to secure, private email services, two big names stand out: ProtonMail and Tutanota. Both services offer a free account so you can try them out, but what does each do differently?

What Makes ProtonMail and Tutanota Different?

ProtonMail and Tutanota are two secure email providers that emphasize security and privacy above all else. This includes supporting end-to-end encryption to make interception nearly impossible, protecting your identity by not keeping logs or requiring tons of personal information at sign-up, and providing secure methods for communicating with people who are using “regular” email providers like Gmail or Outlook.

This heightened security comes at the cost of convenience and features. You may need to use a dedicated mobile app to access your mail, for example (as opposed to your smartphone’s default mail app). With Gmail, Google Assistant can help surface relevant information by scanning the contents of your Gmail inbox, but secure email services can’t do this, since the data is encrypted.

Since secure email is a niche, free accounts aren’t generous like with Google and Microsoft’s offerings (ProtonMail offers 500MB compared with Tutanota’s 1GB.) Secure providers lack features like an integrated chat app or a powerful search engine, but these losses are often worth it to those who value privacy and enhanced security.

RELATED: What Is Secure Email, and Should You Switch?

Both Providers Support Advanced Encryption

Of course, ProtonMail and Tutanota support basic Transport Layer Security (TLS), which is used by all major email providers. This provides a basic layer of security between your computer or smartphone and the server that is responsible for storing and sending email. That’s table stakes for any email service.

On top of this, the contents of your inbox are end-to-end encrypted on the server, which means that you’re the only one who can read them. In the event of a data breach, your data would be virtually useless, because it’s encrypted with a key that will (currently) take an eternity to break. That’s something that Gmail, Outlook.com, and typical email services don’t offer.

Both ProtonMail and Tutanota support easy end-to-end encryption between users of the same service. If you send an email from your ProtonMail account to another user of the same service, it will be automatically secured and signed with a key that only the recipient has. There’s no need to set up anything else when communicating with someone who’s using the same service. In addition to this, ProtonMail also supports PGP.

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an additional layer of security for sending emails to virtually any email address in an encrypted format. Messages are locked with the recipient’s public key and can then be decrypted with a private key only known to the recipient. With ProtonMail, this can be set up to work “automatically” with nominated contacts, taking care of the encryption/decryption process for you.

Tutanota doesn’t explicitly support PGP, though you could still encrypt and decrypt your mail manually if you wanted to.

Both Allow Secure Messaging with “Regular” Email Providers

If you can’t convince your contacts to switch to a secure email provider or to adopt PGP, both ProtonMail and Tutanota have you covered. Each provider has an option to send an encrypted message to any email address. The process is virtually identical for both:

1. Compose an email and choose to password-protect it, then hit send.
2. The recipient receives a notification of a new message, but the message doesn’t appear in the body of the email.
3. Instead, the email contains a link to either ProtonMail or Tutanota’s servers with a password field.
4. The recipient enters the password into the field and reads the message.

This works virtually identically between both providers, except that Tutanota encrypts both the message body and subject line, whereas ProtonMail only encrypts the message body. This doesn’t pose a huge risk if you use the former service. Just make sure that your subject lines don’t contain any sensitive information.

Messages sent this way via ProtonMail expire in 28 days or less (with an option to specify less time), while Tutanota messages are only available until another email is sent to the same recipient.

ProtonMail Is in Switzerland and Tutanota Is in Germany

The country in which your data is stored is important. Both Germany and Switzerland have strong privacy laws, with Germany currently being considered as one of the strictest privacy advocates among EU nations. Switzerland is famously neutral (and not a part of the EU).

Tutanota has written a blog post detailing why the company is located in Germany, citing laws like the Federal Data Protection Act, which forbids data collection and backdoor access to encrypted data. ProtonMail has also written a blog post about its decision to host data in Switzerland, which acknowledges the changing nature of privacy laws in the country while also noting that ProtonMail cannot be compelled to spy on its users.

It’s hard to say which is the safer jurisdiction in terms of data privacy. While Germany has tougher laws, the country is also a part of the Fourteen Eyes, an international intelligence-sharing community.

Since both providers use end-to-end encryption to secure the contents of their servers, data is likely to remain safe even if the German or Swiss authorities were to demand its handover.

Both Services Rely Heavily on Open-Source Code

Making source code available for anyone to peruse is important for a service that sells itself on privacy and security. If your code is open source, it can be audited by anyone. The more transparent a provider is, the more you should be able to trust that they are delivering on their promises.

That being said, neither service is fully open source. In the case of Tutanota, server-side software has yet to be made fully open source. The client-side web interface and mobile apps are already open source, and Tutanota admits, “The only issue that’s left for us to do is to open source the server part of Tutanota as well.”

ProtonMail has a similar commitment to being open source. ProtonMail’s web interface has been fully open source since version 2.0, the iPhone app was open-sourced in 2019, and the Android app followed a year later. The company has stated that it does not plan to release the source code for its back-end server component, since this would give away “information about how we do anti-spam and anti-abuse.”

Many of the technologies that go into both packages, including encryption protocols and ProtonMail’s implementation of OpenPGP, are already open source.

Tutanota Provides a More Attractive Free Option

For private use, Tutanota provides 1GB of storage for a single user, limited search abilities, and a single calendar. There are no restrictions on the number of messages that you can send or receive in a day or how you organize your mail.

ProtonMail offers 500MB for a single user, a limit of 150 messages per day, and three labels with which to organize your mail. This makes ProtonMail more limited for free users than Tutanota.

Neither service is “complete” without upgrading to gain access to features like custom domains, inbox rules, email aliases, autoresponders, and better support. This is another area where secure email providers forge a different path to their free webmail rivals. If you want a capable, secure email address, then you’re going to have to pay for it.

ProtonMail Is More Expensive

A direct comparison of prices is difficult, since both services have different plans and different offerings. If you’re thinking of paying for an email service, however, ProtonMail is the most expensive, with its cheapest plan starting at $48/year or €48/year, with monthly plans also available.

For this, you’ll get a whopping 5GB of space, up to five email addresses (aliases), support for a single custom domain, and access to filters and an autoresponder. ProtonMail still sets a limit of 1,000 outgoing messages per day, although this is a “soft limit” based on how you use your account. You get a maximum of 200 labels for organizational purposes.

Tutanota starts at only €12/year (around $14), but you’ll still only get 1GB of storage in total. You also get a single custom domain, five email aliases, full access to search, and the ability to create inbox rules. There’s no limit on daily messages or labels either.

While Tutanota is cheaper, it also allows you to build your ideal email plan. You can add users, aliases, storage, and additional services such as a secure contact form for your website, and then pay a single monthly fee for it all. ProtonMail takes more of an “all-or-nothing” approach.

Tutanota Supports Searching of Email Body

Being able to search your inbox is a feature that you probably take for granted, but with secure email, it’s not so simple. Due to the way that email is end-to-end encrypted, searching your inbox isn’t possible with ProtonMail. You can only search by subject lines, senders, recipients, and time. This is because ProtonMail’s servers cannot decrypt your email.

By comparison, Tutanota also encrypts your email on the server. In 2017, the service announced that searching the body of an email would now be possible. This takes place locally on the user’s device and can be done either in a browser or by using a dedicated mobile app. This happens without sacrificing privacy, since the search duties are performed by your local machine instead of the server.

If search is a big deal for you, Tutanota has the edge here.

Both Services Require Dedicated Mobile Apps

Neither ProtonMail nor Tutanota is compatible with “regular” email clients out of the box. ProtonMail paid accounts have access to ProtonMail Bridge, which extends support for the service to common mail clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail on Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops. Tutanota relies on dedicated desktop clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux instead.

To access either service on a smartphone, you’ll need to use the dedicated ProtonMail (iPhone, Android) or Tutanota (iPhone, Android, F-Droid) apps. There’s no support for basic mail clients because of the way that data is encrypted on the server.

If you use an unactivated copy of Windows 10, you know that you can’t change your desktop wallpaper using the Settings app. But there’s a workaround to change the desktop background on an unactivated copy of Windows 10.

What Happens When You Don’t Activate Windows 10

Microsoft lets you download and use Windows 10 without activating it, but this comes with some restrictions. The entire Personalization menu in Settings is disabled, which means that you can’t change various appearance options for your PC.

Luckily, Settings isn’t the only way to change the Windows 10 desktop background. You can use alternative methods (such as those described below) to change your wallpaper on an unactivated Windows 10 copy.

Of course, we recommend paying for a Windows 10 license if you use it. That will get rid of the “Activate Windows 10” watermark and give you access to the normal Personalization options. You can upgrade to a genuine, activated version right from the Activation screen in Windows 10’s Settings app. (You’ll find it at Settings > Update & Security > Activation.)

Change the Windows 10 Desktop Wallpaper Using File Explorer

You can use the built-in File Explorer utility to set any image on your computer or external storage as the desktop background.

To use this method, open the folder that contains your wallpaper with File Explorer.

When you see your wallpaper, right-click it and select “Set as desktop background.”

If you’d like to use one of Windows 10’s stock wallpapers, head to the following folder using File Explorer:

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper

Check out various folders there, find the wallpaper that you want to use, right-click on the wallpaper, and select “Set as desktop background.”

Change the Windows 10 Desktop Wallpaper Using Internet Explorer

You can use a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox to set any image on any website as your desktop wallpaper.

That way, you don’t need to download the wallpaper first and then use the File Explore method to set it as the desktop background. You can do this entire task from within your browser.

Keep in mind that Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge don’t offer this option. You need to rely on either Internet Explorer or Firefox to do this.

To do this in Internet Explorer, open the “Start” menu, search for “Internet Explorer,” and click the browser in the results.

Warning: We recommend avoiding Internet Explorer, which is being phased out in favor of modern browsers like Microsoft Edge. However, Internet Explorer still has this feature, while Microsoft Edge doesn’t.

Open the website where your wallpaper is located.

Note: Your image must be in one of the following file formats: JPG, JPEG, BMP, DIB, PNG, JFIF, JPE, GIF, TIF, TIFF, or WDP.

Once you see your wallpaper, right-click it and select “Set as background.”

You’ll see a prompt on your screen. Click “Yes” in it to confirm your action.

Change the Windows 10 Desktop Background Using Firefox

If you prefer to use Firefox, here’s how to use this browser to change your Windows 10 desktop wallpaper.

Launch Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the web page where your desired wallpaper is located.

Right-click your wallpaper and select “Set As Desktop Background.”

You’ll get a box that lets you define how the wallpaper appears on your desktop. If you see that your wallpaper isn’t covering the entire screen in the preview, click the “Position” dropdown menu and select “Stretch.”

This will make your wallpaper cover your entire screen. Then, click “Set Desktop Background.”

How to Go Back to the Default Windows 10 Desktop Wallpaper

Since Windows 10 gives you access to all the stock wallpapers, you can open this wallpapers folder and set the original wallpaper as your desktop background.

To do this, open a File Explorer window and head to the following folder:

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\

Find the original wallpaper, right-click it, and select “Set as desktop background.”

You’re all set.

Credit to: How To Geek - Mahesh Makvana

While deleting files on a Mac, are you tired of warning prompts slowing you down? Would you like to empty the Trash at light speed? If so, it’s easy to turn off the warning you see when emptying the Trash on a Mac. Here’s how.

First, select Finder to bring it into focus. In the menu bar at the top of the screen, click “Finder,” then select “Preferences” in the menu that appears.

When Finder Preferences open, select “Advanced.”

Uncheck the box beside “Show warning before emptying the Trash” on the Advanced pane.

After that, close Finder Preferences. The next time you empty the Trash (by selecting Finder > Empty Trash in the menu bar or by right-clicking the Trash icon in the Dock), your unwanted files will disappear quickly with no warning. Very speedy.

Credit to: How To Geek - Benj Edwards

Google Chrome Apps have changed a lot through the years, but one thing hasn’t—the “Apps” button in the bookmarks bar. If you don’t use Chrome Apps, this little button can be annoying. Thankfully, it’s easy to remove.

The “Apps” button is a default part of the Chrome Bookmarks Bar. Clicking it takes you to the chrome://apps/ page, which is a launcher for web apps installed from the Chrome Web Store. Obviously, if you never visit this page, there’s not much need for a permanent button in your browser.

It should be noted that Chrome “Apps” aren’t the same as Chrome “Extensions,” which are accessible through the Extension menu in the top-right corner of the browser. We will only be removing the “Apps” button.

Here’s all you need to do to remove the Apps button. First, open the Chrome Browser on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer.

Next, right-click anywhere on the Bookmarks Bar or the “Apps” button itself. This will open a menu, from which you should unselect “Show Apps Shortcut.”

The “Apps” button will now be gone from your Bookmarks Bar.

Granted, the Apps button isn’t a huge problem, but if you aren’t using it and you have a lot of bookmarks on the bar, any extra space is welcomed.

Credit to: How To Geek - Joe Fedewa