Email Apps and Privacy
Back in May 2014 we reported on our investigations in to two smartphone/tablet apps that had been launched. We were worried to find that the apps did not use our outgoing SMTP servers directly, and instead sent email through non-Runbox servers. This made for much easier set up of accounts, but we didn’t like that it wasn’t obvious to the user what was going on.
Those apps were myMail and Evomail (the later is no longer available).
Outlook and Privacy
Outlook now has IMAP compatibility and is able to work with Runbox accounts, however, like myMail and Evomail it doesn’t connect directly to the Runbox SMTP servers for outgoing mail. In fact, we don’t know if it retrieves email directly from our servers either. We do know that it stores some details of your account on servers that are part of Amazon Web Services.
If this doesn’t bother you, then that’s fine as Outlook is turning in to a nice email app that sits nicely alongside the other Microsoft offerings for iOS and Android.
Using Email Apps that Connect Directly to the Runbox Service
We believe that for maximum security and privacy email apps should be connecting directly to the Runbox service and not connecting via other servers, or storing account details anywhere other than in the app on the device.
Usually if you have to enter the server details for incoming and outgoing mail then the app is likely to connect to those services directly. If you have any doubts about an app, please get in touch with Runbox Support and we will investigate how it behaves.
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