We are very happy to announce that beginning of October Nikita and Colin joined our team. With new team members joining us by the month, we plan to continue our steady growth, also next year.
We expect that many more people will join our team here in Hanover so if you are passionate not only about privacy, but also about programming, be sure to apply with us.
Introducing Nikita
Why I joined Tutanota
I joined Tutanota because it is important to me to contribute to the fight for privacy, so people in countries like China or Russia, where I’m actually from, can get a possibility to share their data, thoughts or literally just anything without fear of dictatorships using this data against them.
Since Tutanota provides you with an open source and privacy-respecting app for communication, it makes privacy the default on the internet. Tutanota enables people to communicate privately, in other words, without third parties being able to get access to people’s own data. Of course, there are many other companies that claim being made for privacy or even digital security, but some of them use services of other companies that don’t care about people’s privacy or misuse the data they get. Others don’t even publish the source code. In Tutanota it’s never the case, here everything is transparent: from source code to employees’ salary.
Privacy matters
Privacy on the internet is really important to me because I cannot understand how people agree to the fact that their data is being used by others to make them even richer without people getting anything from that but possibly targeted ads that would talk them into buying something they don’t really need. Moreover, the general feeling of being ‘naked’ in front of every website, app, software or company of the internet of today really scares me a lot.
My vision of the ideal internet is that it can be used for private and confidential communication with others. In my vision, there should be no companies making their profit based on data they get from tracking people wherever and whenever possible. Generally, there is no such a thing as user-related tracking in the internet of the future. If there must be tracking in one way or another, then only completely anonymous. This seemingly unrealistic vision of the internet of the future helps me to be highly motivated in the work I do at Tutanota as it is already one of the small things that does what the future internet should be based on.
Unfortunately, the internet as it is today became a lucrative tool for tech giants like Google, Microsoft or Apple that are ready to use all the data of their customers to get even more money. From my point of view, this was not the intention of the people who created the World Wide Web to share data and connect with each other.
What I like about working at Tutanota
I came to Tutao as a dual student of a German university without major experience in programming of big projects such as Tutanota. But despite of that, I was warmly welcomed by the team and got a lot of support from all of them. Now I really like working here because the entire workflow is well structured, everybody is friendly, there are many team events like BBQ (also for vegetarians or vegans 😉) or Ice Cream Days. Should you have personal problems you need help with, you can rely on the good and empathetic team.
I also appreciate very much that the company continues evolving each single day to make its product even better and create a comfortable and modern working atmosphere for the employees.
At the moment, Colin and I are improving Tutanota’s website that unfortunately didn’t get as much attention as the email client in the past. Soon I’m planning to join the email app developing team and improve it together with the others.
Introducing Colin
Why I joined Tutanota
I believe that privacy and security is very important, but also that this importance is not recognized by the millions of people who use modern technology and the internet everyday.
It is amazing that the internet evolved from its humble origins into a technology that is now so widely used, but it seems like during this evolution, the importance of preserving privacy and security was not really a priority to anyone. Today governments, corporations and hackers make use of this circumstance to collect data on all of us.
Unfortunately, with the complexity of technology today, achieving privacy and security on the internet is a privilege only enjoyed by those who can invest the time and effort to actively protect themselves, and I believe that this needs to change by the internet becoming more private and secure for everyone.
Tutanota is helping exactly this cause by offering services that guarantee user privacy, security and even anonymity and that is the primary reason why I wanted to work here: To help everyone live up to their right to privacy without having to sacrifice comfort.
What I like about working at Tutanota
I like the team spirit of the people at Tutanota and the love for open source and the community. Unlike other companies, the commitment to the vision of Tutanota is always palpable. It’s a lot of fun to work in the team because everyone shares the same ambition and pursues a common goal.
It is also great that Tutanota puts a lot of effort into making its team members feel accommodated for. The workplace has a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere and flexibility with working times.
My vision of the future internet
Ideally I want to see an internet in which privacy, security and anonymity is easy to achieve for everyone without giant technology corporations and governments holding a monopoly over it.
I’d want to see a more decentralized and also a more simple world wide web. An internet in which the freedom of all users is respected and in which software is also less bloated than it is today.
I think Tutanota with its simple design and open source code is a good representation of what I would like the majority of the internet to look like in the future.
And this what we are working on at Tutanota: Building the future internet where privacy is at the center.
Tutanota development
Since we launched Tutanota in 2014, our growing team has added lots of functionalities to Tutanota, and even built desktop clients. Now, our new team members will help us to continue the list of features requested by the community, our users! Your support enables us to grow our team continuously.
- In 2014 we published the fully encrypted Tutanota email client, iOS and Android apps.
- In 2015 we introduced first paid features such as custom domain support.
- In 2017 we published a completely new version of Tutanota with better speed & design.
- In 2018 we published the Tutanota desktop clients for Linux, Mac OS and Windows in beta.
- In 2019 we published the beta version of the encrypted calendar and started compressing emails to give you more storage space.
- In 2021 we pushed the Tutanota desktop clients out of beta after an extensive security review.
- In 2021 we completed a first prototype for updating our encryption to post-quantum secure algorithms.
- In 2022 we published offline mode on all Tutanota clients - desktop apps for Windows, Linux and macOS as well as mobile apps for Android and iOS (on iOS offline mode will be published real soon!!!).
For a detailed list of all the features that we have implemented, please check our feature list.
For an up to date information on what we are currently working, please take a look at the first features listed on our roadmap.
We thank our entire community for having joined the encrypted side. Together we will build a better web - one where privacy is respected by default.