Show HN: Easily send encrypted email from your existing email

https://www.virtru.com/get-secure-email

by conorgil145 • 13 years ago

22 26 13 years ago

conorgil1454• 13 years ago

Virtru dev here!

Virtru allows users to easily send encrypted email from their existing email address. It is super easy to use and currently works in your browser and on your phone.

We are launching our public beta program today and would love feedback from the community. Several of the Virtru team members will be monitoring this thread to respond to feedback and questions.

EDIT: Virtru team members: DHowitzer (CTO), ravenac95, znelson, jgilpin

lemonlyman87• 13 years ago

How can Virtru help email users who are concerned with government surveillance activities that have been revealed in the last year?

jgilpin4• 13 years ago

Encryption has been used in the past to keep emails secure from surveillance(PGP), but it has always been cumbersome to setup and use on both ends. Virtru's focus has been to make powerful encryption available to everyone by making it easy to use and with the services you and those you communicated with already use. Right now we have Chrome/Firefox support as well as an iPhone app...but many other clients soon.

mnrasul4• 13 years ago

PGP - one can store the keys on one's own server. In Virturo, it appears it has to be on Virutro servers. So hypothetically, we could have a Lavabit moment.

znelson3• 13 years ago

Hey, that's a great question. We've put a lot of time and effort into thinking about this and have been working with some key people in the industry who have a lot of experience in this area.

We've comprehensively addressed this issue on our blog. Here's the direct link: https://blog.virtru.com/faq-on-government-surveillance/

Let us know what you think.

cschmidt2• 13 years ago

     > Q. What would Virtru do if it received a request 
     >    from the United States government for encryption keys?

     > A. We will require the government to go to court, 
     >    and if we can, we will notify you.

To me that seems naive. You won't be able to notify anyone if you get a National Security Letter (NSL). Lavabit had turned over encryption keys for individual users, because they had to [1]. They only shut down when the government wanted their SSL key, to give access to everyone.

How are you any different?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit

mnrasul4• 13 years ago

So, can I keep the keys myself instead of storing them in the cloud? Or do I have to trust Virtru instead of google or some other company that they don't buckle when someone comes knocking for the keys?

Based on the feature list, I can't have the keyserver on my own server. I have to trust Virtru. This is no different than sending the text in plain IMO.

stormbrew• 13 years ago

The website does actually say advanced users can run their own keystore, but this does seem like the weak point in the service in general.

higherpurpose• 13 years ago

Nope.

However, you’re entrusting us to help you maintain your privacy; you should know how we will respond if the government asks us for access to your encryption keys. The government would need those keys if it wanted to read any encrypted files it does obtain. Without them, the files are useless.
We won’t provide your keys to anyone without your consent — unless we are ordered to divulge them by a judge with jurisdiction over us. If we are ordered to divulge them, we will fight for you to have notice and an opportunity to object.

So I guess I'll keep waiting for a DarkMail client.

gfodor• 13 years ago

so from a security standpoint, this is equivalent to the status quo, except transferring responsibility from Google to a small startup for maintaining keys? I'd be shocked if google doesn't encrypt emails at rest. Is there still plenty of inflight unencrypted SMTP traffic to worry about that this could address? I guess you have to worry about the recipient if you are sending email to a non gmail/hotmail/ymail address?

znelson3• 13 years ago

One of our core goals is to bring privacy to the masses without poeple needing to completely ditch their current accounts and infrastructure. We want to seamlessly integrate with the apps people already use so that even non-technical people can use it.

DarkMail would require people to completely ditch everything and jump to a new system.

But for the super-security minded folks we're researching ways we can seamlessly integrate PGP like capabilities into the product so that Virtru would never even be in a position to see the keys at all.

jgilpin4• 13 years ago

So as of this moment, you can't keep the keys yourself. Our technology absolutely allows for self-hosted keys. We do have private key managers being developed, which we intend to open source, and be for private use. It will be an option for the those that want the responsibility of keeping the keys safe, and also address your concern.

mnrasul4• 13 years ago

great. Thanks. Will signup when it becomes available :)

conorgil1454• 13 years ago

Also, our privacy policy contains details on how we handle user data: https://www.virtru.com/privacy-policy

And we have a blog post discussing some frequently asked questions on government surveillance: https://blog.virtru.com/faq-on-government-surveillance/

DHowitzer4• 13 years ago

Open Source Key Server - For those of you interested in hosting your own key server (ACM) or helping to make a free and open source key server a reality, we're looking for people to help us. Contact me if you're interested.

Show HN: Easily send encrypted email from your existing email

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