Runbox Introduces New Affordable 3-Year Price Plans

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.

See all the plans here

Here’s why we stand out

1. Sustainability First 🌱

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.

See all the plans here

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.

There is no such thing as free email.

What’s your privacy worth?




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Encrypting Your Email Keeps Your Messages Safe

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.

Encryption works by installing software on your computer that lets you generate two digital keys. One key is a public key that you can make available to anyone who might want to encrypt a message and send it to you. The other key is your own private key that lets you decrypt the messages you receive.

Data Vulnerability

If emails aren’t properly encrypted they are vulnerable to exploitation. Free email services such as Gmail or Yahoo have the ability to scan the contents of your emails, and they often give third party developers access as well for advertising purposes. It’s how they make money. Read our blog post about free email services.

Assumed Surveillance

Given that certain agencies monitor internet communications, it’s prudent to assume that anything you send via email could be intercepted. Yes, governments snoop on us. They may collect and store vast amounts of data, and encryption acts as a safeguard against such surveillance. By encrypting your emails, you can communicate freely without the anxiety of being monitored or censored by authorities.

Control Your Privacy

By managing your own encryption, you take control of your data privacy. In case of a data breach, encrypted emails remain unreadable to unauthorized individuals, reducing the risk of sensitive information being compromised. Rather than relying on anyone else to protect your information, you can ensure that it remains confidential.

At Runbox, we prioritize the security of your emails. Here’s a closer look at how we protect your communications and what you can do to increase your privacy.

1. Between You and Runbox

When you use Runbox Webmail, every email you send or receive is encrypted during its journey between your device and our servers. This ensures that data is always secure in transit between you and Runbox’s servers, and between Runbox’s servers and the recipient. This encryption safeguards your messages from potential interception, ensuring that your communications remain confidential.

If you prefer to use an email client like Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, you can still enjoy the same level of security by connecting through our mail.runbox.com server. This means your emails are encrypted during transfer, providing peace of mind whether you’re accessing your inbox via web or client.

While your emails are encrypted during transfer, it’s important to note that they are not currently encrypted while stored on our servers. However, because our servers are housed in a highly secure facility in Oslo, Norway, there are stringent measures to protect your data. Not only is your data protected by the strict privacy laws in Europe; our servers are housed in a highly secure data center. You can read more about our commitment to security and details about our privacy protections.

2. Between Runbox and Other Email Services

When our servers handle emails sent to and from other email providers, we always aim to establish a secure, encrypted connection. This process begins when our server “asks” the recipient’s email service if it can use a secure connection. If the other server agrees, your email is transferred securely, shielding it from prying eyes.

However, not all email services support secure connections. If the recipient’s email server can’t accommodate this, your email will be sent using standard protocols. In this case, unless you encrypt the email content yourself, there’s a risk that it could be read if intercepted during transmission.

It’s crucial to understand that while we make every effort to use secure connections, Runbox has no control over the email services you correspond with. Therefore, while this secure transfer facilitation is beneficial, it’s not a complete guarantee of privacy.

3. Additional Protection of Your Email

If you don’t want anyone to be able to access your emails, end-to-end encryption ensures that only you and your intended recipients can read the content of messages. There are two popular methods for encrypting email this way; PGP and S/MIME. Runbox supports both standards, which can be used with an email client or with Runbox Webmail. These are free and open source. Here is an overview.

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy):

PGP is the easiest encryption standard to get started with. It is based on a “web of trust” because it only involves the sender and recipient, and assumes that they trust each other. Both sender and recipient must have PGP installed, and messages are encrypted using the recipient’s public key. Despite the name, PGP is considered to be cryptographically very strong and is probably the most popular email encryption standard today. To get started with PGP, see our Encrypting and Securing Email Using OpenPGP help page and https://help.runbox.com/using-openpgp-some-things-you-need-to-know/.

– S/MIME: Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions:

S/MIME requires a digital certificate from a Certificate Authority. While it offers strong security, it can be more complex to set up than PGP. The functionality is built into most major email client programs. Both parties must have an S/MIME enabled email client. This method is also based on a “chain of trust”. A certificate obtained from a Certificate Authority validates the sender’s identity and makes the public key available to others.

– Mailvelope

Mailvelope is a user friendly browser add-on for Firefox and Chrome. The extension enables users to encrypt and decrypt emails using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) directly within the Runbox Webmail. It provides a simple interface for managing encryption without needing extensive technical knowledge. You can install the Mailvelope extension from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons. Then you can generate a PGP key pair (public and private keys) through Mailvelope. Here’s how.

Final Thoughts

Encryption can be a vital tool for protecting your communications. At Runbox, we strive to make it as straightforward and secure as possible. By understanding the layers of protection we offer, you can take proactive steps to ensure your emails remain private. By adopting end-to-end encryption practices, you ensure that your emails remain confidential and secure from unauthorized access. 

We are here to help.

Runbox has a pretty extensive help section that will help guide you in setting up encryption for your email. We encourage you to check it out because this is a blog post and we can’t include everything here!

See Encrypting Your Runbox Email for an overview of email clients that you can use and their encryption support.

We’d love to hear from you. Please contact us if you want help with the setup.

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There’s No Such Thing as Free Email.  

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.

For example, Gmail, Yahoo and others scans the content of emails to provide targeted advertisements. While this might seem innocuous, it raises serious questions about privacy and data security. They analyze and store your emails, which may contain sensitive information. In essence, you pay for “free” email with your personal data.

2. Your Information becomes the Product

Not only do these companies scan your emails to identify keywords that can inform ad targeting, they also analyze your address book to create a more comprehensive user profile. In addition, tracking how you interact with the service helps companies refine their advertising strategies. While this may seem harmless, it raises significant privacy concerns. Companies can utilize your personal information, conversations, and contacts in ways you might not approve of, often without your explicit consent.

For instance, Google integrates data from Gmail with other services like Google Search, Google Drive, and YouTube. This comprehensive data collection creates a rich profile that includes more than just your email interactions.

3. Free Email Poses Security Risks 

Free email services frequently pose security risks, primarily due to lack of encryption. While some providers encrypt emails during transmission to safeguard data from interception, this protection often doesn’t extend to end-to-end encryption or data stored on their servers. Consequently, although emails may be encrypted during certain parts of their journey, they can still be accessed in areas where encryption is lacking. This leaves sensitive information vulnerable to malicious actors who could exploit these gaps.

Strong encryption is crucial for business communications as it safeguards sensitive information from unauthorized access and cyber threats. In today’s digital landscape, businesses often share confidential data, financial details, and proprietary information via email or messaging platforms. Without robust encryption, hackers can intercept this information, leading to data breaches that harm both the company and its clients.

What can you do?

Opt for a paid email service. Runbox offers premium, reliable, privacy protected email at an affordable price. We prioritize security and privacy, and with multiple layers of protection in place, we safeguard your data against unauthorized access. 

Privacy First

Your privacy is paramount at Runbox. Because we are based in Norway, 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 of your personal information. Our terms of service explicitly state how your data will be handled. Runbox does not use any external tracking cookies to monitor usage, which means that no third party will know that you are using our services. Only you can access your data.

Security

At Runbox we employ several layers of security to protect your data, and have built multiple layers of redundant systems to keep our services reliable and responsive at all times. Our servers are housed in a highly secure data center in Norway, featuring 24/7 surveillance and advanced security systems. The facility includes fire suppression systems, electromagnetic protection, and intruder detection systems, and only authorized personnel are allowed access to our servers. We keep your data safe and secure with data protections, encrypted communications and strong authentication.

Reliability

Runbox prides itself on delivering exceptional reliability, and our email system ensures the safe and secure delivery of all email. We take snapshot backups daily to a secure, off-site location to ensure that your data can always be recovered in the event of an unlikely disaster or if you happen to unintentionally delete some of your email. Just let us know and we’ll restore your data for you. Continuous upgrades and monitoring systems ensure that any issues are promptly addressed. 

Sustainability

Runbox is committed to connecting people across our planet consistent with strong ethical and environmental principles, and we strive to minimize our environmental impact. Our email servers and offices run on renewable hydro power and we actively recycle and repurpose outdated hardware. This ethical approach ensures that your email service is not only efficient but also environmentally responsible. In addition, we provide free email services to environmental non-profit organizations.

Ad free 

Unlike many free email services that monetize user data through ads, Runbox offers an entirely ad-free experience. You won’t encounter intrusive advertisements, and we will never put hidden ads in your emails, allowing you to focus solely on your communications without distractions. Instead of generating our income by compromising your email communication with targeted ads, we charge a reasonable subscription fee up front (after a free trial, of course!)

We’ve been in the business since 2000, and we are dedicated to providing secure, reliable and sustainable solutions to individuals and businesses. Whether you’re just getting started or transitioning from another provider, the Runbox team is ready to assist you every step of the way. Investing in a paid email service will offer you greater peace of mind and security. Remember, if you’re not paying for a product, you might just be the product. 

Try us out for 30 days. Subscribe here. Read all about what we offer here.

What’s your privacy worth?

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Plus-addressing lets you create an alias on the fly

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.

For example, if your email address is bob@nullrunbox.com, you can create a tag bob+shopping@nullrunbox.com, or bob+news@nullrunbox.com. You can use any tag, and make up as many as you like. 

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.

If you need help, contact Runbox Support.

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Using Email Aliases to Combat Spam and Protect Your Identity

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.

Benefits of using email aliases

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The Grindr case illustrates how Norwegian authorities fight against misuse of personal information

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.

The figure below, from https://noyb.eu/en/eu-58-million-fine-grindr-confirmed, illustrates the problem.

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Privacy Matters 

When we go online or use apps, we are being tracked. Companies collect our personal data by tracking us across the web sites we visit. They build profiles on us based on our browsing history and online behavior. They want to sell us their products and services, and the more they know about us the better they can use this data to manipulate our behavior. 

You know those ads that pop up everywhere after you looked up something? After you’ve looked up a new car, car ads follow you around all day. You research a vacation to Alaska, and travel ads show up everywhere. This is the result of targeted advertising, which is based on data they collected on you. Some call it surveillance capitalism, and it’s big business. 

Privacy is about how your data is collected, processed, stored and used. It’s about maintaining control over your personal information and your identity. Privacy isn’t about hiding secrets, it’s about keeping your personal information safe from people who can do harm.
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Got hacked? What to do if your email account has been compromised.

Suddenly you are noticing strange things happening with your email. You’re receiving email messages about login attempts, password resets and two-factor authentication codes, and your friends and family are wondering why you’re sending them weird emails. You can’t even log in to your own email account and you’ve been bumped out of your social media accounts. What is going on? Your email might have been hacked.

Don’t panic… but act quickly. You can minimize a lot of damage if you act fast and methodically.

Because your email is a gateway to all your online accounts, like banking, shopping, social media and streaming, it can potentially be a goldmine for a cyber criminal if they gain access. Here’s what you can do.

The signs that your email has been hacked

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Why am I getting so many spam emails?

You may have noticed that you’re getting a lot more spam email lately, which is frustrating and annoying. You diligently go through these emails and add them to your Spam filter, you block the sender, unsubscribe from mailing lists and so on. The spam emails keep coming…

Why it’s happening

  1. When we sign up for web sites we effectively give them permission to use our email. These companies may sell your email address to other companies who will in turn send you spam.
  2. Whenever there is a data breach on a website where you have subscribed to something, email addresses can be repeatedly sold to other spammers. You can check if your email has been been in a breach here: https://haveibeenpwned.com
  3. Spammers use mechanisms that allow their emails to go through the spam filter. They will use valid email addresses such as a @gmail account, create look-alike domains that will look like a legitimate company, or even spoof your own email address because many people whitelist their own address.
  4. Because of AI, spammers and phishers can very quickly create mass campaigns. Previously, spam was often easily spotted because of bad grammar and lack of personalization (goodbye Nigerian prince). Now, spammers use artificial intelligence to make spam and phishing more convincing, and they use social media, online behavior and public information to generate personalized campaigns. The result is that we are bombarded with spam.

What you can do

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Special Holiday Offer from Runbox

We are feeling extra merry this month and would like to make the holidays brighter with a special limited time offer:

Throughout December you get a FREE YEAR with main account renewals on the Medium plan or larger!

Giftbox

This means that your existing account plan will be immediately upgraded for TWO YEARS if you purchase the Medium, Max, Max100, or Max250 plan now.

The additional subscription time will automatically be added to the end of your current subscription.

Just go to Plans & Upgrades and log in, and then select the Medium plan or larger. Finally, proceed to the shopping cart in the top right corner and complete your payment.

Happy Holidays from all of us at Runbox!

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