Three Privacy Tools, and the Overlap Nobody Explains

Travel kit lists recommend NordVPN, Proton and 1Password together, as if you should pick one. They do different jobs, and all three have grown into each other’s territory. Nobody selling any of them has a reason to say where.

The three jobs

A VPN moves your traffic somewhere else before it reaches the internet. That is the whole job. It matters on hotel and airport Wi-Fi, which is shared infrastructure you do not control, and for looking as if you connect from one consistent place rather than a new country every four days. It does nothing for your passwords or your email.

A password manager holds your credentials and fills them only on the domain they were saved against. That detail matters abroad, and it is why we call it the travel tool nobody packs. It does nothing about the network you are on.

An encrypted mail and storage account changes who can read your data at rest. It protects the contents of your mail and files, and does nothing for the network or the login. Most travellers have never consciously bought this job, and it competes with your Google account rather than with the other two.

Where they overlap

All three now offer password management. NordVPN sells NordPass, Proton includes Proton Pass, and 1Password is a password manager. Someone who buys a VPN for the tunnel and then a separate password manager may have paid twice for something bundled. Check what your existing subscription, bank account or phone plan already includes before you add another.

Bundled tools are usually good rather than excellent, and a password manager is where good enough costs something. It holds the credentials to your bank, your email and your return flight. That argues for the dedicated option even with an extra subscription. It is a defensible trade either way.

Who each one is for

Pick NordVPN if you want the tunnel and want it to be boring. It is the easiest of the three for a normal user by a clear margin. Install it, sign in, turn on auto-connect and forget it. Nothing else in your digital life has to change.

Pick Proton if you want a different relationship with your data. Most people compare it to a VPN, but the closer comparison is Google Workspace. Mail, calendar, storage, documents and passwords sit under one account, run from Switzerland, on the premise that the provider cannot read them. If it bothers you that so much of your life sits in one advertising company’s account, this is the answer to that. The VPN is close to a side effect.

The free tier matters most here. You can move a calendar and a mail alias across for nothing and see whether you tolerate the switch. It is the only way to find out.

Pick 1Password if you have decided the credential layer is what matters. It does one job. For a traveller the value is offline access to a vault, recovery that does not depend on the phone in your pocket, and a fill that declines to work on a lookalike domain.

What we use

We travel on NordVPN and have used 1Password for years, which is why the two linked articles can describe their settings in detail. The bundled password manager was available and we pay for the dedicated one anyway.

We recommend Proton on its structure, with no personal testimonial. The suite and the free tier are both things you can check yourself in an evening.

Set up at home

Install and sign in before you fly. Every tool here is harder to set up from where you need it: app stores get restricted, verification codes go to a SIM you have swapped out, and a locked vault is worst at the moment you need it most. Do the VPN first, because it has to be installed and signed in to protect the network you land on. The two linked articles make the same point.

What this page rests on

This is our view of three tools we have used or examined. It is not a benchmark or a lab test. We have not measured speeds, audited anyone’s encryption or compared these tools against every alternative. There is no official source for a product recommendation, so the page carries none. Read the current terms before you pay.