Lavabit closes down

[herzmeister]

wtf what a mess, it was almost my main account these days  

http://lavabit.com/

My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.

probably because it has been found out that Snowden used Lavabit.

[cjp]

Does anybody know a good alternative for Lavabit?

I'd like a free (or cheap Bitcoin-paid   ) e-mail service which is
* reliable (running for at least a couple of years with very little downtime)
* has reasonable support
* is dedicated to privacy
* has no ties to the United States
* is preferably operated by people who are part of geek / free software / crypto culture
* has preferably only a low level of advertisement annoyance

[favdesu]

Does anybody know a good alternative for Lavabit?

I'd like a free (or cheap Bitcoin-paid   ) e-mail service which is
* reliable (running for at least a couple of years with very little downtime)
* has reasonable support
* is dedicated to privacy
* has no ties to the United States
* is preferably operated by people who are part of geek / free software / crypto culture
* has preferably only a low level of advertisement annoyance

I don't think there is one. Use PGP, so you don't have to worry about this kind of things. https://prism-break.org/ is a good site to look for privacy related stuff, btw.

[escrow.ms]

Does anybody know a good alternative for Lavabit?

I'd like a free (or cheap Bitcoin-paid  ) e-mail service which is
* reliable (running for at least a couple of years with very little downtime)
* has reasonable support
* is dedicated to privacy
* has no ties to the United States
* is preferably operated by people who are part of geek / free software / crypto culture
* has preferably only a low level of advertisement annoyance

You can use Chinese/Russian email services. Like qqmail and mail.ru

[HeroC]

What was lavabit again?

[herzmeister]

stories:

http://boingboing.net/2013/08/08/lavabit-email-service-snowden.html

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/ed-snowdens-encrypted-e-mail-service-shuts-down-leaving-cryptic-message/

[halfawake]

Does anybody know a good alternative for Lavabit?

I'd like a free (or cheap Bitcoin-paid   ) e-mail service which is
* reliable (running for at least a couple of years with very little downtime)
* has reasonable support
* is dedicated to privacy
* has no ties to the United States
* is preferably operated by people who are part of geek / free software / crypto culture
* has preferably only a low level of advertisement annoyance

The closest I'd be able to get to a site that meets your requirements is magnesium.net, which probably fits most of your requirements.  Unfortunately, I can't really recommend it because it hasn't really been reliable lately.  Most of the time it's up, but there are occasions when it's down for weeks at a time, so reliable it isn't.  

If you can afford it, the easiest way to get something like this is to host your own website, then you can have an email address that you control more than you would otherwise since it's hosted on your own domain.  I'm going to buy my own hosting eventually and would be happy to sell you an email address through it if you like, but I'm not planning on setting it up for a while so that doesn't really help you now.

Edited to add: Actually, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Hushmail here.  They're based in Canada and I think they meet all your requirements: PGP based email, good support, no advertisements.  I don't know how reliable they are, but I've heard good things about them, so that's what I'd go for if I were you.

[ccl]

yeah...most of my accounts is tied up to my lavabit email  Privacy again....dang  

[aigeezer]

Looks like Silent Circle is down too: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/08/silent-circle-preemptively-shuts-down-encrypted-email-service-to-prevent-nsa-spying/

[narayan]

It sucks that Lavabit has closed down. It was my favorite email service. However, I'd rather have them shut down instead of comply with the NSA/DoJ and insert a backdoor into their service.

I think running your own mail server would be a good idea.

[bernard75]

And Tormail taken down too:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/
This is becoming crazy.

[Spendulus]

Does anybody know a good alternative for Lavabit?

I'd like a free (or cheap Bitcoin-paid  ) e-mail service which is
* reliable (running for at least a couple of years with very little downtime)
* has reasonable support
* is dedicated to privacy
* has no ties to the United States
* is preferably operated by people who are part of geek / free software / crypto culture
* has preferably only a low level of advertisement annoyance

You can use Chinese/Russian email services. Like qqmail and mail.ru

Any centralized site can be the victim of attacks and shutdowns.  

[ccl]

And Tormail taken down too:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/
This is becoming crazy.

freaking crazy man...

[chipug]

A minority of commenters were more supportive. “Holy shit, you guys are crying over your Steam accounts,” wrote one. “Just change your email to something else. Lavabit either had to roll over for the government, compromising our privacy, or shut down service. Be happy Ladar shut it down instead of rolling over.”

^ I think that's also a fair point.

[J603]

And Tormail taken down too:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/
This is becoming crazy.

So the government went after a hosting service that hosts child porn? Oh no!

[bernard75]

And Tormail taken down too:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/
This is becoming crazy.

So the government went after a hosting service that hosts child porn? Oh no!

LOL, thats all i got to say.

[BitCoiner2012]

It is happening quickly.

[J603]

And Tormail taken down too:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/
This is becoming crazy.

So the government went after a hosting service that hosts child porn? Oh no!

LOL, thats all i got to say.

Freedom Hosting has long been notorious for allowing child porn to live on its servers. In 2011, the hactivist collective Anonymous singled out Freedom Hosting for denial-of-service attacks after allegedly finding the firm hosted 95 percent of the child porn hidden services on the Tor network

That's from the article you posted.

[bernard75]

They also hosted 95% of freedom and liberty sites on the tor network.
Please educate yourself, before you jump on the bandwagon yelling "Child molesters, lets burn it down!".

[Spendulus]

And Tormail taken down too:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/
This is becoming crazy.

So the government went after a hosting service that hosts child porn? Oh no!

LOL, thats all i got to say.

Freedom Hosting has long been notorious for allowing child porn to live on its servers. In 2011, the hactivist collective Anonymous singled out Freedom Hosting for denial-of-service attacks after allegedly finding the firm hosted 95 percent of the child porn hidden services on the Tor network

That's from the article you posted.

Think it out.  What does this actually mean?  That Tor actually is effective in hiding the identity of the surfers?  Seems like otherwise, they would have wanted the site left open as a honeypot.

There's a story here, and it's not just a shrug and a laugh and....

So the government went after a hosting service that hosts child porn? Oh no!