Ever since Lavabit shut itself down last year, several different new alternatives have been proposed for people who want a truly secure email system that can’t be accessed by government agencies such as the NSA. BostInno reports that a team of students from Harvard and MIT are banding together to create a new email service called ProtonMail that they say will be more secure than Lavabit and won’t be hackable by the NSA or other spy agencies. Not only does this new email service offer end-to-end encryption but it’s also based in Switzerland, where it won’t have to comply with American courts’ demands to hand over user data. The service launched as a public beta last week after spending two weeks before as an invitation-only private beta. Anyone will be able to use ProtonMail to a limited extent for free, although the students say that “power users” will have to pay $5 a month to use the service.
A group of MIT and Harvard students is creating the most secure email system ever
Published May 19th, 2014 11:00PM EDT
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Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.
