Runbox is dedicated to maintaining user security and privacy. A key practice that supports this commitment is our policy of not recycling email addresses. We do not assign old addresses to someone else.
Runbox is committed to user security and privacy, and a fundamental part of this commitment is our policy of always using unique email addresses for our users. We understand that your email address is a critical component of your digital identity, which is why we never reassign old addresses to new users. This practice safeguards your personal information and ensures that your communications remain private and secure.
By avoiding the reuse of email addresses, we help eliminate the risks associated with recycled addresses. This includes potential unauthorized access to sensitive information or confusion from multiple users sharing the same address. This approach not only protects your identity but also fosters a more reliable and trustworthy communication environment.
Using unique email addresses offers several benefits:
User Security: Each email address @runbox is unique to an individual account, minimizing the risks associated with unauthorized access or account recovery complications.
Data Privacy: Unique email addresses do not carry over any previous data or associations. This helps protect users from potential exposure to sensitive information linked to prior accounts.
Email Integrity: The practice helps maintain the integrity of communications. New users won’t have to deal with confusion from past messages or subscriptions linked to an old email address.
Reduced Spam and Phishing Risks: We help reduce the chance of new users inheriting spam or phishing attempts directed at previous users.
Support and Management: Because each email address remains distinct, we avoid complications arising from historical associations.
Rest assured that no one else can use your email address @runbox, including alias addresses.
You can read more about our service and what we offer on our website.
Check out our new 3-year price plans for great savings here.
Spam these days is no joke. Keeping our inboxes tidy can feel like a full-time job, and just when you think you’ve got it under control, an unexpected twist occurs: legitimate emails end up in your Junk folder. Yes, we’re talking about the moment when you realize important messages are hiding away in spam purgatory, thanks to email clients like Apple Mail, Outlook and Thunderbird.
Last week we wrote about a dual spam filter approach using email clients and how to set this up. We also talk about how spam has increased dramatically lately, and the reasons why. Here we look at how legitimate emails can end up in the Junk folder
The Frustration of Missing Emails
We’ve all been there. You’re expecting an important email, maybe a project update or a message from a friend, and it never arrives. You check your inbox—nothing. You start to wonder if they even sent it. Then, on a whim, you dive into your Junk folder, and there they are. Emails you thought were lost, marked as spam by your email client.
But it gets even more frustrating. Sometimes you have already filtered these emails specifically. You added them on your allowlist (what we used to call whitelist) in your Runbox Webmail, meaning you’ve already done the work to ensure they reach your inbox. So, why does your email client override your careful training and send them to Junk anyway?
Many of us continue to face a frustrating challenge: an overwhelming influx of spam emails. This is when spam is more than just a nuisance – it becomes a real problem. Why are some inboxes inundated with spam? We look at why it’s happening and what you can do about it.
The Connection Between Data Breaches and Spam
Data breaches are alarmingly common, and stolen email addresses can be easily sold on the dark web. People who receive a lot of spam have often had their email addresses exposed on the dark web. There is a direct connection between data exposure and the amount of spam in our inbox.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence
AI is significantly contributing to the rise of spam emails by enabling spammers to automate content generation, craft personalized messages, and conduct targeted campaigns at an unprecedented scale. With advanced natural language processing, spammers can create convincing emails that evade traditional spam filters, while machine learning allows them to analyze data and segment audiences effectively.
The Reality of Online Sign-Ups
Every time you sign up for a service, your email address enters a database, and depending on the company’s privacy practices, that information can be at risk. It’s essential to approach online sign-ups with caution – consider using disposable email addresses for non-essential services and researching a company’s privacy policy. Being aware of the implications of online sign-ups is crucial for protecting your personal information.
Have I Been Pwned: A Crucial Resource
A valuable tools available is https://haveibeenpwned.com, a legitimate website where you can check if your email addresses have been compromised in known data breaches. By simply entering your email address, you can see if it has appeared in any breaches, along with details about the specific incidents.
In an age where digital communication is essential, the tools we use to connect can significantly impact our mission and reach. We are committed to fostering a sustainable future, and support those who work tirelessly to protect our planet. As part of this mission we offer free email services to environmental organizations.
Who We Are
Runbox is an environmentally conscious email service provider that prioritizes privacy, security, and sustainability. Based in Norway, Runbox operates on renewable energy and aims to minimize our carbon footprint. Our services are designed to be user-friendly while offering advanced features that cater to both individual users and organizations.
Supporting Environmental Organizations
This program is part of our broader commitment to fostering a sustainable future and supporting those who work tirelessly to protect our planet. It reflects our dedication to supporting causes that align with our values. Effective communication can lead to increased awareness, greater community engagement, and stronger advocacy efforts. This support helps create a network of informed and active citizens dedicated to environmental causes.
Runbox is dedicated to providing sustainable email services from the heart of Norway, where strict privacy regulations safeguard your data. We’re excited to introduce 3-year plans that offer a 20% discount. By choosing Runbox, you support sustainable practices that make a positive impact on the environment while enjoying fast, secure, and privacy protected email services from Norway.
Today, we are pleased to announce new 3-year price plans with a 20% discount.
We pride ourselves on delivering premium email services at an affordable price. In fact, we have not increased our prices since our company’s inception, and at the same time we have added substantial storage to all our plans. In a time when price hikes on essential services have become the norm, we believe in offering you predictability and stability for a service as vital as email.
This means you’ll get high quality premium email services at a great value. With plans starting as low as $1.40 per month for our Micro plan, you can choose from six different pricing tiers to find the perfect fit for your storage needs. No surprises – your email service costs are transparent and locked in for three years, ensuring peace of mind and excellent service at a great price.
Runbox is an independent, employee-owned company with a focus on security, privacy, and sustainability.
We are committed to connecting people across our planet consistent with strong environmental principles. We care deeply about our impact on our planet and work to minimize our ecological footprint. The entire Runbox email service infrastructure runs on 100% certified hydroelectric power, and we are transparent about our efforts to remain sustainable.
2. Privacy Protection 🔐
Runbox is based in Norway, and your emails and personal data are protected by strict Norwegian and European data protection regulations. This means that your data is completely private and secure. We do not sell your data, we don’t track your usage, and we don’t share any personal information.
3. Ethical Operations ⚖️
We are an independent company guided by strong ethical values that shape our business practices, service development, and customer relationships. As an employee-owned organization, we all have a stake in our operations and we are not beholden to investors or big tech.
4. Open Source Transparency 🌐
We support open-source software which ensures the continuous auditing of our own software by the tech community. In other words, it offers an additional layer of trust in how Runbox handles your data. Open-source systems also give you the peace of mind that there are no hidden backdoors or surveillance tactics baked into the platform.
5. Secure and Reliable ✨
We provide high-capacity, reliable service. Easily create multiple alternative addresses and different profiles for all your communication, and consolidate all your email in one place. Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds an extra layer of protection to your account, and encryption helps keep your communication secure.
6. Excellent Customer Support 💬
The Runbox Team combines diverse experience serving customers around the world. Whether you’re setting up a new account or migrating from another service, our team is available to help you every step of the way. With an extensive help section, along with our Email School and how-to’s, we address any issue quickly and efficiently.
Runbox is perfect for anyone who values sustainability and privacy, and a user-friendly email platform.
It’s important to have some predictability when it comes to essential services such as email. What we offer is a balance between sustainability, privacy, and affordability. With strong privacy protection, open-source transparency, and a commitment to sustainability, Runbox is much more than just an email provider. It is a platform built for users who care about the future of digital communication and our planet. Lock in a discounted price today.
Our top recommended plans
See all our plans on our Price Plan Page and experience the Runbox difference.
If you are an existing Runbox customer, thank you! You can purchase the 3-year plan directly in your account here.
In today’s digital world, privacy and security are more important than ever. As we navigate online communications, it’s important to understand how encryption can safeguard our emails. Let’s explore what encryption is, how it works, and why you want to consider using it.
What is Encryption?
When you send an email without encryption, it’s like sending a private message on a postcard – anyone who handles it can read its contents. At its core, encryption works by converting the readable data of an email into a scrambled format. Basically, the contents of that email turns into gibberish so that nobody can read it. The point is to keep the email private while it’s in transit from you to the recipient.
Even though most email services use some form of encryption for data in transit, this is not the same as end-to-end encryption. With end-to-end encryption, only the sender and the recipient can read the message. This method effectively prevents anyone else, including email providers, from accessing the content of your messages.
While many of us might feel that we have little to hide and aren’t overly concerned about others reading our communications, it’s important to understand how our information could be accessed. Encryption helps to safeguard our personal information, which may contain sensitive details about our personal finances, family matters, or other private information.
The Real Cost of Our Digital Communications is Our Privacy.
You’ve been happily using “free” email for years, and haven’t thought much about it. The problem is that it’s not really free. You become the product, and you pay with your privacy. Let’s dive into what it means.
1. Free is not free
With countless services offering “free” email accounts, it’s easy to assume that we can communicate without any cost. But companies that offer free email typically rely on advertising revenue, which means they collect vast amounts of data about our habits, interests, and communications. They use this information to tailor advertising, and that’s how they make money.
Email aliases are great – they help organize emails, reduce spam and protect our identity. But sometimes we need a quick way to create an alias without having to log in to our account to set it up. That’s when we can use plus-addressing, or subaddressing.
You simply add a + to your email address followed by a tag.
Any email sent to a plus-address is delivered to your account as usual. The message is still addressed to the plus-address, and you can use this in various ways to manage your email.
Plus-addressing benefits
Make up addresses on the fly without having to set anything up in your Runbox account.
Works with any email address, alias or domain.
Use a plus-address to identify sites where you used your email address.
Plus-addresses can help hide your main email address.
Use a different tag for each site so that if one has a data leak you know which one it is.
Filter email to specific folders based on the plus-addressing.
Create a filter to delete email to that particular plus address if it starts receiving spam.
Plus-addressing and email aliases are great tools to manage your email. With a Runbox account you get unlimited plus-addressing and 100 email aliases. If you have your own domain name, you get unlimited aliases. Check out this post for more info about aliases.
You can get more details about plus-addressing here.
To learn about how to create email aliases, check out this blog post.
Do you use email aliases? Aliases are a great tool that can help protect your identity, reduce spam, and organize your inbox.
Aliases are alternative email addresses that you can use to separate emails. Instead of using the same address for everything, you set up different aliases for online subscriptions, registrations, newsletters, social media, business contacts and so on. Any category that works for you. You can use your main address for friends and family, or create another alias.
All your aliases are set up under your main email account, and is delivered to your primary inbox. You can even set up filters so that mail is separated into specific folders in your account.
Not only will aliases give you another layer of anonymity, it also gives you control over your information and makes online tracking more difficult. Having aliases can help prevent someone hacking your main email account, and helps protect you from phishing attacks. If one of your aliases starts to receive lots of spam, you can easily delete the alias and set up a new one.
Oslo District Court has found Grindr’s sharing of personal data illegal as a result of the Norwegian Consumer Council complaint from 2020. Accordingly, Grindr has to pay EUR 5 million, as fined by the Council.
Our guardians of personal data and privacy: NDPA, NPAB, and NCC
As we have written multiple times in our blog series about GDPR and consequences of this EU-regulation, Norway has a long history of protecting citizens’ personal information. It started out with the first Personal Data Act implemented in 1978 with the purpose of protecting the individual against privacy being violated through the processing of personal data. The law was updated with GDPR clauses in the year 2000.
In 1980, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (NDPA) was established as an independent authority whose task is to monitor compliance with the Personal Data Act. It is important to note that the NDPA has two roles: supervisory authority and ombudsman.
The NDPA decisions may be appealed to NPAB, Norwegian Privacy Appeals Board (Personvernnemda), whose decisions are final.
During recent years, another Norwegian governmental public body, the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), whose role is to protect consumers’ interests, has become involved in privacy, more precisely the misuse of personal data that big tech companies are involved in. As a governmental-independent agency, the NCC is free to chose the cases they want to work on.
Sharing of personal data is illegal without specific consent: The Grindr case
Recently, the NCC has put effort into the task of preventing the big tech companies from using personal information for surveillance-based marketing that the users have not consented to. Neither have users given consent to how personal data is transmitted to the companies’ partners.
