Lavabit

Lavabit: Open-Source Encrypted Email Service

An open-source email service focusing on privacy and security, launched in 2004 and shut down in 2013 due to legal pressures.

What is Lavabit?

Lavabit is an open-source email service that offers end-to-end encryption and focuses on providing privacy and security for its users. It was created by Ladar Levison and launched in 2004 as an alternative to other email providers like Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

Lavabit's main selling point was its strong encryption that prevented anyone, including Lavabit itself, from being able to access users' emails and data. This was meant to protect user privacy. Lavabit used SSL and TLS connections and offered 2048-bit encryption of stored data as well as data sent between the Lavabit servers and users.

The service was initially popular with privacy advocates and activists but gained more mainstream attention when it was revealed in 2013 that Edward Snowden used a Lavabit email account. Shortly after, Lavabit shut down its service after US authorities requested access to Snowden's Lavabit account data. Levison claimed he had been served with a court order that appeared to demand access to his SSL keys which would have given the government access to all Lavabit user communications and data.

Rather than comply with what he felt was an unconstitutional demand that would have violated his users' trust, Levison turned over the service's SSL keys as 11 pages of unreadable 4-point type, at which point the FBI threatened him with arrest. Facing criminal charges and concern for his users' security, Levison closed Lavabit in August 2013.

Since the shutdown, Lavabit has worked to re-create its services as an open source project and non-profit focused on privacy, transparency and truly secure communications between people and services. It re-launched in 2018 with a modified architecture designed to prevent the kind of mandated backdoor access that led to its previous shutdown.

Lavabit Features

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