When we started our open source project Tutanota at Leibniz University Hanover, we never expected it to become such an important tool for protecting people’s privacy. But with the constantly growing misuse of customer’s data, it becomes obvious that everybody needs to think twice before not encrypting their data. The good thing about Tutanota - and probably one of the reasons for our success - is that you don’t need to think twice. Your entire mailbox is automatically encrypted end-to-end, and no one but yourself can unlock your encrypted emails.
As surveillance is growing people turn to encryption
Today the use of mass surveillance online is a standard technique in many countries worldwide. If that wasn’t dangerous enough, it seems that politicians with extremist and intolerant views on many issues are being voted into power in several countries these past few years. This development makes it more important for more and more people to protect their private communication from state surveillance.
Lately politicians have already arrived at telling journalists what they are supposed to inform the public about. In Russia the media is controlled by the government, in Turkey oppositional journalists are being locked away, and in the US president-elect Trump tries to tell journalists what to write about.
Mass surveillance needs to end
This development is alarming, and, at the same time, encourages us to keep fighting for our right to privacy. In 2015 and 2016 we have seen a vast increase in Tutanota users so that our secure email service has now well over one million users.
The large and constantly increasing number of users does not only help to make Tutanota a lasting success, but the growing interest in encryption also gives us hope. We are hopeful that the more people realize how important it is to keep their data private, the more will also influence politics and politicians so that mass surveillance will eventually come to an end.
Thank you so much for everything!
We want to thank our users - particularly our early adopters - as your feedback was and is very valuable in building our secure email service Tutanota. We would have never been able to build Tutanota as you use it today without your support!
Our greatest success came when we published Premium features in 2015. We were astonished by the number of people upgrading to Premium just because they wanted to support us and our fight for privacy online.
The success of Premium makes us independent and lets us develop Tutanota the way we want it - without any influence from investors or any other third party.
2016 was good, but 2017 will be even better!
In 2016 we have already added lots of features to Tutanota, such as drafts, inbox rules and many more. We have also extended our range of Premium features by adding increased storage and email alias packages to make the financial base of Tutanota even more sound. Plus we are already working on a completely new client that will improve speed and design enormously.
Thank you again. Here’s to five successful years! :)