(on Wikipedia)
lavabit.com

Lavabit was a secure email provider.

I had used it for years, but it shut itself down in the early parts of the Edward Snowden PRISM-leak affair.

• Abandoned

  • It would later be resurrected as a paid service.

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• 2009-08-04 -- signed up.

Abandoned ∞

• 2013-08-09 - Yesterday there was a note of downtime for server maintenance. Today, Lavabit has been taken offline permanently, with a note of partial-explanation.

The note ∞

My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what's going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What's going to happen now? We've already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here [ 1 ] .

Alternatives? ∞

Even if they were to come back up, I would assume that they have been completely compromised.

Although I personally wouldn't be too concerned about using them again, even if I knew for sure they were rooted, it's a matter of ethics to switch to hosting my own email. While I figure that out, I'll need to do some research on where I can switch.

• I would have thought https://www.gmx.com/ would be suitable, but they're American too.

• Obviously Google's Gmail. They're "not evil" (wink wink).

More research needs to be done. It'll probably be easier to self-host.

On that note, hosting my own email is insecure unless I do all of my own hosting.

Last updated 2023-01-16 at 00:46:29

Footnotes