ProtonMail: open-source or reCAPTCHA?

ProtonMail has been popular throughout the privacy communities, for its stricter policies on data; amazing security features and easy-to-use encryption features.

Overall, ProtonMail has implemented privacy features that companies like Google have yet to add to their service.

While ProtonMail is touted as a privacy-respecting alternative to Google, the company has still decided to embed closed-source Google code into their website. This can be seen when you choose to create a ProtonMail account, where you are asked if you would like to complete a reCAPTCHA.

Embedding closed-source code, therefore fuelling its ecosystem, is harmful for your community It is even more harmful when the company creating this code is Google, when they monitor users' internet usage against the users' wishes.

A reCAPTCHA is a way of making sure that your service does not get abused by bots maquerading as real visitors. While this technique has proved to be quite successful in keeping robots away, many companies use Google's proprietary service to do this. The website owner is then expected to embed closed-source code into their website, which then requires the user to complete a challenge to provide they are a human.

While the reCAPTCHA may keep away the majority of robots, it sends personal data to Google, which most users are unaware of.

Free, open-source products like Click Captcha; Securimage; Django Simple Captcha would be better alternatives. More options can be seen on the switching.software page. These products offer the same level of security, but are much better in terms of privacy. They are not surveillance tools used to train Google's AI.

I would suggest removing the reCAPTCHA code and replacing it with a FOSS alternative, which would suit the spirit of the product better. It will also reduce Google's tracking of ProtonMail users. As ProtonMail is well known for its privacy, it may be better to remove non-free third-party code that spies on users.

EDIT: There are some interesting alternatives linked here.