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Mailbox.org Review

November 7, 2019 By Sven Taylor — 26 Comments
Based inGermany
Storage2 - 100 GB
Price€1.00/mo.
Free TierNone
WebsiteMailbox.org

mailbox.org email

When you are competing in the “secure email service” space against heavy hitters like ProtonMail and Tutanota, it helps to have an edge. Today we are looking at Mailbox.org, yet another secure email service based in Germany.

Mailbox.org resembles the best of secure services with its use of top-end security protocols and strong privacy protections. But it also resembles services like Office 365 or the Google suite of productivity tools.

How? Mailbox.org includes the email, contacts, calendar, and file storage apps that you find in the leading email services, along with their own browser-based office suite of tools.

So let’s dive right into this Mailbox.org review and take a good look at what it has to offer.

+ Pros

  • PGP support (server-side or through third-party app)
  • Company and server located in Germany with strong privacy protections
  • HSTS and PFS for messages in transit
  • Protected against man-in-the-middle attacks
  • Message and spam filters
  • Virus protection
  • Full text search
  • POP, IMAP, SMTP, ActiveSync support
  • vCard, CardDAV, CalDav support
  • Messages are encrypted at rest
  • Supports custom domains
  • Open source

– Cons

  • No mobile clients (but can be used with third-party email clients)
  • Some tracking during registration

https://Mailbox.org/

Mailbox.org features overview

Mailbox.org has several features that help it stand out from the crowd of secure email services. These include:

  • An expanded range of apps: Mail, Calendar, Address Book, Drive (cloud storage), Tasks, Portal (access to all apps), Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Webchat
  • An automatic, guided tour of all the features and apps
  • A clean, three-pane UI with drag-and-drop capability
  • Publishes Transparency Report and a detailed Privacy Policy
  • Top rating for Privacy and Data Protection by Stiftung Warentest
  • Enhanced Security Certificate provided by SwissSign Certificate Authority

We’ll take an in-depth look at some of these features below.

Mailbox.org company information and history

Mailbox.org is a product of Heinlein Support GmbH, based in Berlin, Germany. The email service is based on an earlier product, which was redesigned and rebranded as Mailbox.org for its 2014 relaunch. The service is privately funded and debt-free, protecting it from influence by outside investors.

The mail servers are located in two geographically separate German locations and run in parallel. Heinlein Support GmbH owns and manages their own hardware rather than renting servers from third parties.

According to their website, Heinlein Support GmbH uses 100% green energy, and banks with the German Bank for Social Economy.

While Germany is generally considered one of the better places to base a secure mail service, the country is a party to the 14 Eyes intelligence agreement. The German Federal Intelligence Service reportedly cooperates with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) in surveillance matters. This may be worth considering depending on your threat model.

Despite this, Germany seems to be a popular location for email providers, which also includes Posteo and Tutanota.

Mailbox.org technical specifications

Mailbox.org uses a full range of industry-standard encryption algorithms and communication protocols to protect and transport your messages. These include:

  • PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
  • TLS/SSL (Transport Layer Security / Secure Socket Layer)
  • PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy)
  • HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security)
  • CAA (Certificate Authority Authorization)
  • MTA-STS (MTA Strict Transport Security)
  • X-XSS (cross site scripting protection header)
  • DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions)
  • DANE/TLSA (DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities / Transport Layer Security Authentication)

The service also supports POP, IMAP, SMTP, and ActiveSync for synchronizing with other mail services and clients.

Mailbox.org hands-on testing

As is my usual practice, I’ve conducted this Mailbox.org review using the free, 30-day trial version and the browser-based client. Thirty days is sufficient time to test out the service and decide whether you want to continue using it.

Signing up for Mailbox.org

The signup process for Mailbox.org was pretty typical, but there were a couple of unusual aspects to it.

One controversial aspect is the appearance of a reCAPTCHA in the registration process. ReCAPTCHA is a Google service that attempts to verify that you are a human, and not a bot.

mailbox.org test review

Using reCaptcha to confirm that you are human is a potential privacy problem. The situation is somewhat complicated, and we don’t need to dig into the details here. A June 2019 article at Fast Company, Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side explains the potential privacy and usability issues if you want to learn more.

The registration process also asks you for a telephone number or alternative email address. I prefer services that don’t ask for this kind of information, but in this case there’s a twist. Mailbox.org asks you for the telephone number or email address after your registration is complete. And handing over that information is optional.

The idea here is that you would give the company one or both of these, if you want the ability to reset a lost or forgotten password. Giving you the option to trade additional personal information in exchange for help recovering your account is a great idea.

And that’s it as far as registering your account.

The Portal

Once you log in to your Mailbox.org account, you’ll know this isn’t the typical email service. The first thing you see is the Portal, a customizable interface to the various sections of the service.

mailbox.org portal review

The Portal does more than help you navigate to the different sections of the service. It also displays relevant information from each section, making it easy to do a quick status check of everything.

I recommend that you immediately take the short Welcome to mailbox.org Office tour to get acclimated to this unusual, yet very useful, interface. Once you finish, click the envelope icon in the green bar at the top of the window to move to the mail section.

The look and feel of Mailbox.org

Mailbox.org has an attractive, 3-pane user interface. Here’s the email section:

mailbox.org germany

It looks a lot like the other email clients we’ve reviewed here and supports drag-and-drop as if it was a dedicated client instead of a window in your browser.

You get all the features you would expect: mail folders, message sorting (including sort by conversation), a reading pane, and the ability to sync to additional accounts.

Composing messages in Mailbox.org

You compose messages in a separate window that gives you all the features you would expect. You also get niceties like signatures, read receipts, and the ability to attach vCards to your messages.

mailbox.org messages email

Once you’ve got your message composed, you just need to decide how you will send it.

Sending messages

Mailbox.org lets you send messages in the clear or encrypted, whether you are sending to another user of the service or not. Sending messages in the clear doesn’t require any special effort on your part. Sending encrypted messages takes a bit more work.

Sending encrypted messages

In the message composition window, click Security, then Encrypt. By default, the Mailbox.org Guard feature will kick in to encrypt the message for you. The first time you use Guard, a wizard will pop up and guide you through setting it up.

Guard runs on the Mailbox.org servers and uses the password you enter to PGP encrypt your messages. This makes using PGP super easy, but forces you to trust that your information is handled securely on their servers.

If you want complete end-to-end encryption without having to trust Guard, you can install Mailvelope, a browser plug-in that manages your encryption keys on your device and encrypts/decrypts messages on your device as well.

If the recipient of a message to doesn’t use PGP, Mailbox.org gives them a link to a secure mailbox on the company’s servers where the recipient can view the message safely.

Receiving messages

Any messages you receive that are not encrypted will appear in your Inbox normally. If you receive an encrypted message, the message itself will be hidden and a form will appear in your Inbox asking you to enter your Guard password to decrypt the message:

mailbox.org encryption

Searching for messages

The message search box looks for words or phrases in the current folder. As you type into the box, you get the option to limit the portion of messages that get searched, as shown here:

mailbox search

Mailbox.org Calendar

The Calendar does everything you could ask for, including syncing with external calendars, setting recurring appointments, and scheduling meetings based on the schedules of all attendees.

mailbox.org calendar

Address Book (Contacts)

Mailbox.org organizes our contacts into address books that you can search. You can import and export contacts using CSV format.

mailbox.org contacts

Drive (File Storage)

Drive is Mailbox.org’s name for your cloud-based file storage. As you can see below, the storage is divided into folders which you can share with other people for either viewing the contents of folders, or viewing and editing files in the shared folders.

mailbox.org drive

This is a good, fully-featured storage system and another benefit of Mailbox.org.

Other elements of Mailbox.org

Beyond the features we’ve seen so far, Mailbox.org gives every user a Task manager, Text editor, spreadsheet, Presentation app, all with templates for business documents. There is even a chat app built in.

Mobile apps and integration with other email clients

Mailbox.org doesn’t include any dedicated mobile or desktop app. If you want to use this service without relying on your browser, you will need to use SMTP, POP or IMAP to connect with one of the many available third-party email apps.

The company provides instructions for connecting your Mailbox.org account to many popular third-party apps. Search the Knowledge Base to see if your favorite apps are supported.

Is Mailbox.org Really Secure? Is it Really Private?

Mailbox.org has a good reputation as a secure and private email service. Let’s investigate, starting with their Data Protection & Privacy Policy, and their Transparency Report.

Mailbox.org Data Protection & Privacy Policy

I like the Mailbox.org Data Protection & Privacy Policy document. It does a good job of explaining everything in plain language, including describing what data is logged, how long it is held, and what they can do with it.

The main takeaway is that they are compliant with Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws. While Mailbox.org promises to resist turning over data about its users whenever it can, their ability to do that is limited.

A few paragraphs from the Data Protection & Privacy Policy stand out:

According to Section 113 of the German Telecommunications Act (Telekommunikationsgesetz, TKG), the public prosecutor’s office and the police have relatively easy access to the so-called database data of a telecommunications provider like us. In this case, simple requests for information are sufficient without the need for a judge’s decision. According to Section 113 of the Telecommunications Act, a telecommunications provider cannot legally defend itself against this request for information – it must be fulfilled. It should be noted that according to Section 113 (II) of the Telecommunications Act the provider must maintain silence about the request and may not inform the affected customer about the access.

Mailbox.org is required by law to turn over basic information about their users to the government on request, and banned by law from telling you about it.

Access to the log data of mail or web servers or the email content of a mailbox requires a judge’s decision to disclose/search, unless the investigating authorities can directly establish “imminent danger”. The telecommunications provider has no legal means at its disposal, even against the search order; it can no longer defend itself against the “confiscation” of the log data.

A judge can force Mailbox.org to turn over its logs without any recourse. Investigators can likewise force Mailbox.org to turn over its logs without any recourse if they can establish “imminent danger.”

However, we cannot judge whether the database data you provided when you registered is correct and accurate. If you encrypt your email traffic with PGP, we are also not able to make the content of these emails readable either.

While Mailbox.org has to turn over this data, if you register anonymously, use a good VPN provider to hide your IP Address, and encrypt all your messages with PGP, the data is likely to be of little use to whoever demanded it be turned over.

Mailbox.org Transparency Report

Mailbox.org publishes yearly Transparency Reports on their site. The reports go back to 2013 (the entire life of the service), which is great.

However, there isn’t really much information in the reports, as you can see here.

They received 72 requests, finally rejected 13 of them, and supplied the user data that was requested in the other 59 cases.

Even privacy-focused email services need to fulfill lawful demands for user data coming through official legal channels. To protect yourself, you could utilize the PGP encryption feature and also hide your IP address through a good VPN provider, since IP address logs are being recorded.

How secure is Mailbox.org?

Mailbox.org is a very secure service. They use HTTPS (TLS/SSL) along with PFS to protect communications between your devices and their servers. But they don’t stop there. As they state on their site,

In order to rule out any data manipulation by third parties, we were one of the first providers to secure our domain with DNSSEC and DANE/TLSA. Moreover, whenever there is an opportunity to increase communication security further, we will do so. For example, we use mechanisms such as HSTS, CAA, CSP, MTA-STS and X-XSS to effectively prevent ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks. This helps us make sure that your communication with our servers via SSL/TLS is truly secure.

The built-in Guard system provides easy-to-use, server-side PGP encryption, and you can boost your security even further by installing the Mailvelope plug-in and storing your encryption keys locally.

I like that the service applies PGP encryption to all messages at rest on their servers, whether or not they were encrypted originally.

Two additional security features help Mailbox.org stand out amongst secure email services:

  • TLS-Check. A system that checks to see if a message “will be transmitted over secure SSL/TLS-encrypted connections – before it is actually sent!”
  • alias@secure.mailbox.org domain. You can create an email alias with the secure.mailbox.org domain, which forces any messages from this address to travel over secure connections or not at all.

There is one drawback to the Mailbox.org security model. The PGP protocol does not support the encryption of message metadata. There are also some other problems with PGP you may want to consider.

How private is Mailbox.org?

Based on what I found in their Data Retention & Privacy Policy, Mailbox.org does a good job with protecting your privacy.

Like any service with a physical location, they are subject to the laws of the country (Germany) they are located in. The company records as little personal information as possible, and points out that they have no way to confirm that the personal information you do enter into their system is true (hint, hint).

Despite being a member of the 14 Eyes alliance, Germany has good privacy laws in general. Combining that with Mailbox.org’s compliance with GDPR means your communications and other data are about as private as you can expect. Assuming your threat model doesn’t involve activities that would cause a German judge to issue a court order for your messages, or annoying national intelligence agencies like the NSA or Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), you should be fine.

Mailbox.org business features

Mailbox.org offers scalable and highly-customizable email and groupware services for businesses. Their business offerings are really too diverse to list here. If you are looking for a SaaS email service that can be optimized for your business, check out their offerings here.

Support

Support is a potential problem area for Mailbox.org. While I have no complaints about them, I’ve seen quite a few criticisms floating around the net. While some people report fast, professional service, others complain of long waits for unprofessional responses.

Given this, it is good to know that the Mailbox.org website has links to an extensive Help/FAQ section as well as fairly active User Forum.

Mailbox.org Plans and Pricing

With all the options they offer, it isn’t surprising that Mailbox.org pricing is complicated. If you want to move from the free 30-day trial to a paid plan, you’ll have to brave their confusing pricing page.

Individual price plans

It took a few minutes to puzzle out the pricing page. That’s because the section on Individual Price Plans lists an individual plan (Secure Mail), a plan for teams of up to 10 members (Team Mail), and all their business plans (Business Mail).

mailbox.org prices

Ignore Business Mail for the moment. A basic, single-user Secure Mail account runs 1 Euro per month. Team Mail is 2,50 Euro per user, and includes a range of Team and Groupware features, along with more mail storage and aliases.

Business price plans

Mailbox.org also offers a full range of business price plans. There are three service packages, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, along with lots of options for the number of email inboxes and storage capacity. If these options don’t meet your needs, you can also Mailbox.org for a personalized quote.

To get all the details on the Mailbox.org business plans, visit this page.

Is Mailbox.org the best secure email service for you?

Whether this is the best secure email service for you depends on your threat model as well as whether or not you will benefit from all the extras that this service gives you. I can’t really help you with that part of the equation, but here’s my summary of factors you should consider relative to your threat model:

  • Jurisdiction – Mailbox.org is based in Germany and its servers are in Germany.
  • PGP support – Includes server-side PGP encryption. Supports Mailvelope for extra secure end-to-end encryption.
  • Import feature – Uses Audriga service to import your data from other services.
  • Email apps – A web-based client. Can sync with third-party apps.
  • Encryption – Emails and attachments encrypted in transit. Messages encrypted at rest on Mailbox.org servers.
  • Features – Offers cloud-based office suite in addition to a full set of email-related apps.
  • Open Source Code – Most code is Open Source. Per their website, “Internal backend infrastructure (“Glue”, internal API-Server, backup scripts, maintenance scripts, anti abuse detection systems, process logic) are developed by us and not open source.”

Mailbox.org alternatives

If for some reason you don’t like Mailbox.org, but still want all the features it offers, I’m not sure that there is an alternative out there. Their combination of super secure email, with a complete office suite and optional team and business features, is unique in my experience.

If you don’t like this service and don’t need any of the special features it offers, you will probably be happy with one of these:

  • ProtonMail
  • Tutanota

Mailfence and Posteo are two other popular alternatives we’ve reviewed that may also be worth considering.

Our secure email roundup discusses these and other options as well.

Mailbox.org review conclusion

Mailbox.org is a highly-secure email service at a bargain price. It also offers a lot of additional value with its built-in office suite and tools for teams and big businesses. If you don’t mind dealing with a service based in 14 Eyes member country Germany, you should take advantage of their 30-day free trial. Mailbox.org is a contender.

You can see all our other email reviews here.

Sven Taylor

About Sven Taylor

Sven Taylor is the founder of Restore Privacy. With a passion for digital privacy and online freedom, he created this website to provide you with honest, useful, and up-to-date information about online privacy, security, and related topics. His focus is on privacy research, writing guides, testing privacy tools, and website admin.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. AvatarRoi

    April 6, 2021

    Hi Sven, thank you for taking the time to review privacy-related services. I have been eyeing mailbox.org for some time as a potential Gmail replacement. I noticed that you state that mailbox.org provides encryption at rest, some digging indicates even after enabling PGP, newly imported emails are still not encrypted (unlike Protonmail which encrypts even imported emails). Did you find something like this as well during your review?

    Also, what do you think of their 2FA handling? I noticed that they do not adopt an “app password” approach if the user have 2FA enabled but still want to login to their mailbox with a third party email client. This means either the user disable services completely and always rely on their website using their strange amalgam 2FA (keeping the security of the account at the cost of no chance to use third party clients), or use their normal password with POP/IMAP (reduced security and defeats the purpose of settings up 2FA in the first place, but more convenient).

    Reply
    • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

      April 7, 2021

      Hi Roi, I have not examined this service too closely since the review a few years ago. I will take a closer look when I update this review in the coming months. Until then, feel free to share what you learn right here in the comments.

      Reply
  2. AvatarLRM20

    January 19, 2021

    First off thank you for this resource in restoreprivacy.com!! I’ve signed up for ProtonMail and Mailbox.org to explore their systems – keep in mind I’m not an IT person, but i am somewhat skilled with a computer and trying to de-google completely. I really wanted to stay out of the 14 Eyes, but i also would like to have calendar (CalDAV) and notepad features with my selection. Mailbox has more features but Proton is outside of 14 Eyes. Any help out there on how to decide? I’m leaning towards Mailbox because I’m mainly trying to get away from Google, and i think the NSA if they really want something are going to get it regardless… just my thoughts.

    Reply
    • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

      January 19, 2021

      Yes I’d recommend Mailbox.org more at this point based on the available features. You may also want to check out Mailfence.

      Reply
  3. AvatarMeru

    October 5, 2020

    The site’s privacy recommendations says Tutamail & protonmail. So is Tutamail better than Mailbox.org ? I found that many excellent names where still available, does this mean people are quitting mailbox or what?

    Reply
    • AvatarMeru

      October 5, 2020

      As soon as i inscribed to mailbox.org i received mail from old owner, that’s the price of finding a good name tht’s still available(like re-owned cell numbers), after 90 days dropped names are re-circulated, something no review has ever mentioned. I have to check if tutamail has a different lock down policy for used e-mail names.

      Reply
  4. AvatarIgor

    June 8, 2020

    Does anyone have an insight when will Mailbox allow new registrations? It keeps showing “Due to maintenance work, the registration of new accounts at mailbox.org is blocked for a few days. Please check back in a few days.”, but it was like that for almost 2 weeks, maybe even more.

    Reply
    • Avatarit's me

      August 14, 2020

      It seems that that message is location based. If you try it with IP address originated from Russia you will get the maintenance message. Turn on VPN, pick any other country (let’s try USA) and reload the page. You will get the registration form. Turn off VPN and reload – suddenly maintenance.

      Reply
  5. AvatarAnton

    February 19, 2020

    OK, correction, you can keep logging in to Mailboxes Guard choosing from 10 minutes to session to open encrypted messages.
    I just tried out the search function in the body of the emails, it does not work inside encrypted messages, even when logged in to the Guard.
    At this point Prontonmail looks simpler to use as you don’t need to generate keys yourself or understand how all this PGP stuff works, seems like it is automatically taken care off, with your login password?

    Reply
  6. AvatarAnton

    February 18, 2020

    Hi I am looking into Mailbox right now, I also set up a Protonmail account a couple of days ago.
    What I don’t like at all is the Mailbox Guard system. I am a complete newbie with (PGP) encryption but when I send an encrypted email from Protonmail to Mailbox I need to choose a password with a hint for my recipient. They receive the link (English only) click, insert my chosen password and can read the email. This seems all very trustworthy for my recipients point of view.
    On the other hand sending an encrypted email from Mailbox Guard system is a disaster, the recipient needs to choose a password to get into this Guard mailbox. – They just want to read the email, not interested in a mailbox, create passwords or sign up. The whole thing just does not earn enough trust.
    What’s even worse is that when I want to read my send encrypted emails from Mailbox, I need to insert my key for every email: “Secure Email, enter your mailbox.org Guard security password.”
    Also just tried out the search function keyword in the message is a hit and miss 🙁

    Reply
  7. AvatarTanya

    February 8, 2020

    I’m a volunteer transport coordinator of rescue dog transports and send out “run sheets” daily to a database of volunteers (willing participants) in an effort to recruit drivers for the transport. Most of these transports require around 20 individual volunteers to save these furry lives, and the “run sheets” contain several embedded links containing sign-up forms, protocol, etc. That said, I need the ability to BCC several hundred recipients at once. I’ve been using my iCloud account, but it limits the number of daily recipients, so if I happen to have a massive transport taking place, it hinders my ability to reach out to everyone who be available to assist. I don’t need any calendars or the like…just the ability to mass email. This is NOT spam as all of the recipients have signed up to receive these emails. Would Mailbox meet these needs? If not, is there one that someone could recommend?

    Reply
    • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

      February 8, 2020

      You could reach out to their support directly with this question. Mailbox.org can probably do what you need it to.

      Reply
  8. Avatardewill

    November 30, 2019

    Hi Sven,
    I do not understand why email verification by phone number be considered an invasion of privacy. As many email providers require phone number such as Gmail, Outlook, Zoho Mail. Would you explain this a bit more?
    Thank in advance.

    Reply
    • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

      November 30, 2019

      We look at it from a privacy perspective. This could link your phone number (and identity) with your email account, which is what Gmail does, and is not good for privacy.

      Reply
  9. AvatarRichard Allen

    November 15, 2019

    Subscribestar apparently is quite a good donation site, there’s always bitcoin too of course.

    I agree with Nick Sven, you deserve more for your efforts, like I said before, you should do a fundraiser.

    (Not sure if the “reply” is working properly btw, we’ll see when I post I guess.

    Reply
    • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

      November 15, 2019

      Thanks Richard. Correct, the reply function with the comments has been broken for the past two days but we’re working on it now and it should be fixed today…
      Update: Comment replies should be working now. You may have to clear your browser cache and reload the page.

      Reply
      • AvatarAlme

        November 23, 2019

        Hey Sven,

        Does mailbox.org strip email from headers?

        Reply
        • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

          November 23, 2019

          From their security page:
          “Anonymised mail headers where information about users, IP addresses, or software clients used has been removed”

  10. AvatarRichard Allen

    November 14, 2019

    I think we can conclude from these reviews, plus probably our own dabbling with them is that there’s not that much between them.
    Tutanota stands out is the best one by a horses hair, but for many of the others, it seems more like a participation race, as the prices aren’t hugely different, “Criptext” looks interesting being based on the Signal protocol, but…it’s based in the U.S.
    Shame there isn’t a provider in or based in Panama.

    O/T: You know of any applications/services that can strip metadata from files? That’s something I think would interest a lot of people. Shame there aren’t camera apps that don’t produce any metadata in the image files.

    Reply
  11. AvatarNick

    November 14, 2019

    P.S. For context, if you were to set something like that up I would give NZ$10 per month on a ‘set and forget’ automated basis for as long as I use this service (years I expect)

    Reply
  12. AvatarNick

    November 14, 2019

    Hi Sven

    I am extremely impressed with this website and it has helped me enormously since I began using it six months ago. I am a young kiwi travelling in South America currently.

    If I could make a suggestion, I would like to donate to support your work but on an ongoing basis. Have you ever thought about setting up a Patreon page? Don’t know what they’re like for privacy (lol) but if they’re no good, maybe a similar site which allows supporters of creatives to make ‘set and forget’ ongoing donations. I’d be surprised if a crypto-currency version of such sites/services doesn’t already exist or will soon.

    Also, one other question, have you thought about setting up a review page for hardware? I stumbled about this German company ‘Purism’ yesterday through one of the pages on your site somehow and I think that market – with huge potential – is only just beginning to develop…

    If not I’ll just make a decent one-off donation in the near future but setting this up would make it easier for me – and likely others – to give you more and on a regular basis with less effort. Could be worth a try: more people will do it if it’s easy and convenient! The security and peace of mind that comes with regular ongoing donations is nice for anyone, as opposed to erratic and more random ‘one off’ blocks of donations.

    Honestly? I think if you pitch it right you could easily turn this into a lucrative (in an ethical sense, of course as you share such values with me clearly) full-time gig and help many many people. Even just managing it and outsourcing and overseeing some of the work on reviews.

    I dunno, it’s helped me a lot but if you scaled it up like this it could help many more people. Of course maybe that’s of no interest to you and it’s good and helpful already. But the potential is there.

    Kind regards
    Nick

    Reply
    • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

      November 15, 2019

      Hi Nick, thanks for your suggestions. I’m looking into this right now.

      Reply
      • AvatarNick

        November 16, 2019

        No worries man! Your work is awesome and I greatly admire your ethics and brutal honesty, lol. I think many people are underestimating how much of a groundswell and change there has been with regards to online income streams and the willingness of content consumers to compensate creators for what they consume and use, even voluntarily. This shift has happened very fast.

        Even if you only get 10% of people who use your site often wanting to give back, in many cases this still adds up to an enormous amount each year… and often a lot more than 10% of your audience will give, especially if the content is high quality and really useful to them.

        Honestly, this site fills a gap in the market that is exploding in interest and size right now and the potential here feels massive.

        I think it is very admirable that your work is not behind a paywall and this is part of the ethics – which comes off very well to readers – but you can have the best of of both worlds I think… Just a thought but if you explained to people in such a patreon page what certain levels of financial support would allow you to do in terms of producing more content and/or expanding, I think that would encourage people more. One of my favourite websites (www.mongabay.com – the leading conservation news website online) that I have used for years recently did this and I am supporting them now, if people really value your work and use/refer to it often all you need to do is just to be open, honest and authentic and just ask.

        When I get a pay rise I will be happy to give more like $20 a month (NZ$240 a year). I feel sort of dirty every time I use the internet in a way that compromises my freedom. I’m not sure how much relief and peace of mind you know it gives some of your readers to be able to have honest, trustworthy guides that allow them to live their values and take back even some of their online privacy in this age of global surveillance. Like you say, even in this game of reviewing such sites, the corruption can be truly shocking.

        Cheers
        Nick

        Reply
        • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

          November 16, 2019

          Hey Nick, thanks, very encouraging. I’m looking at options right now for taking the site to the next level. Thanks for the input.

  13. Avatar..

    November 8, 2019

    Sven I was reading many suggestions from concerned privacy Redditors and other people on different forums that this is a common suggested one as well as Posteo.
    —
    One thing I am wondering if you can write a bit about is how practical is PGP… It’s great they have it but I can’t even get my family members let alone closest friends to adopt it. Also: who even emails any more? function of my email is like a backup to the passwords i forget to things like bank accts, etc. or a way to verify i am who i am. PGP seems almost a redundancy?? This thing was used when in the 1980s? And nothing better was made?
    —
    Please help a guy understand what your thoughts are on PGP. I’m not a journalist living in a harsh government area or a criminal (as far as I know)… why people praise PGP, and what’s so great if my emails are usually about banal things like a to-do list to my family:
    walk dog, make this for dinner, we have dentist this day etc
    Thanks,
    ..

    Reply
    • Sven TaylorSven Taylor

      November 8, 2019

      Hello, yes, email is a bit old school I guess, but many still use it. For more secure communication, I prefer a secure messenger service, such as Wire or Signal.
      Regarding PGP, check out this PGP article written by the cofounder of Tutanota for Restore Privacy readers. PGP does indeed have many flaws and issues.

      Reply

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