Lawful Path Forums

I received an email today notifying me I have been accepted into the beta testing program for startmail.com.

This is a privacy-oriented encrypted email system, being launched by the same folks who do startpage.com. As a beta tester, I get a free account for 90 days.

In their terms of service, which I scanned through but did not read in detail, it says they will not release any details about you or contents of your accounts to anyone, "unless presented with a valid Dutch court order."

I plan to test out the system, and later post a review here for the benefit of our readers.

If I understand correctly, the system uses no advertising (advertising can compromise security), so they charge a fee for the service. I don't know what that fee will be, but I'll find out before I post the review.

My review will also give them extra points, if the encryption works in such a way that even the startpage staff cannot read email, thereby protecting the user EVEN IF someone DOES obtain a valid Dutch court order.

In the meantime, if any readers have also become beta testers, I would like to please exchange email with you through the system. Since non-startmail users will be sending and getting emails in plain-text, the only way I can test the encryption is to exchange mail with other startmail users.

My startmail username is editorlawfulpath, and the domain is startmail.com.

Thanks for helping.

Gregory,

The beta test program for StartMail is closed, as they are doing testing with those who signed up early. Have you been able to do some testing with StartMail? If so, could you post your experienc with it so far?

I did sign up to receive updates and to be notified of their paid e-mail service.

LawOfLiberty

I have to admit I kind of dropped the ball on this one.

I was one of the early sign-ups for the beta-test program. This was sometime last year, way before I made the decision to move lawfulpath.com and all my other Internet services from a hosting company, and over to a VPS which gave me more control.

By the time Startmail rolled out their beta, I had a fully developed server, and was otherwise pretty covered up. I created this topic, which never generated any interest until your note. My 90 days is technically over, but the system did let me log in a few moments ago. I have not used it at all.

I will say the interface is clean and responsive. It looks very much like any webmail service with which you are probably already familiar.

As for encryption, their documentation states that they keep mail on the server encrypted. They also make it easy to send encrypted mail to users of other email systems, through the use of a question/answer scheme.