As you may have noticed we have upgraded our front page to better convey Runbox’ offering and our values. We hope you like it!
If you would like a simpler login screen, just click the “Simple Login” link underneath the login area (which you can then bookmark in your browser).
Today we disabled SSL 3.0 for POPS (Secure POP) and changed how we terminate POP connections to make it more secure.
Some Apple Mail users are using the server address apop.runbox.com and/or the authentication setting: Authenticated POP (APOP) in Apple Mail.
To change the account settings, please follow these instructions:
We added a Apple Mail compatible setup on the 13th of February 2013 after an update to Mail from Apple broke authentication for many users.
The new settings is a more secure way of using POP and will make sure your connection with our servers always use TLS (Transport Layer Security) or it will fail.
To celebrate a great year and to further the cause of secure and private communication, we would like to give all our customers:
A Runbox account is a great gift to someone you know who cares about secure and private communication — and of course a fully featured, professional email service.
And make sure you lock in our current great prices by taking advantage of our 3 years for the price of 2 offer on the Medium subscription plan!
Please contact us after you have completed your payment to let us know you want to take advantage of this offer so that we can add the sub-account slot to your main account.
You will then be able to set up the sub-account by going to Account > Sub-Accounts.
Note that whenever you renew your main account the additional time will simply be added to the end of your subscription, so you won’t lose any subscription time by renewing early.
Happy Holidays from everyone at Runbox, with our best wishes for the new year!
Terms of this offer:
We have worked hard on upgrading our email server park to accommodate all our new customers — and things will only get better: Based on our recent success, our shareholders decided to invest fresh capital to start several new projects that will take Runbox to the next level.
To boost IMAP performance and improve the experience especially for iPhone and iPad users we will soon deploy new Dovecot-based IMAP software.
We have started implementing an SSD (Solid-state Drive) based storage strategy to dramatically improve the performance of our email storage units. SSDs are up to 100 times faster than regular, rotating disks, so this will improve the speed of our IMAP services.
We are also expanding our server park with new servers and upgrades to continue improving reliability and overall performance.
We will continue working hard to ensure the privacy and security of your data, and have the following projects lined up for next year:
We look forward to continue providing great email services in the year to come.
2014 has been an exciting year for Runbox and we’ve seen a substantial increase in popularity and growth. This has really boosted our progress — we now have several major upgrades in the pipeline, and we are very happy to be launching a new Webmail design!
We’ve called the new design Runbox Aero because it’s lighter, airier, and simpler — and it makes using email a breeze!
Runbox Aero is inspired by modern, state-of-the-art design, and we have listened carefully to feedback from you in order to make it both aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly.
You can try the new design now by going to
Webmail > Preferences and selecting Runbox Aero from the drop-down menu. Make sure you click Save Settings afterwards!
You will quickly notice some of the improvements, but the following changes are worth mentioning:
We hope you like the new design, and please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions!
Today we have upgraded the remaining Runbox 5 users to the latest version of the Runbox webmail interface. We introduced Runbox 6 in January 2013 and gradually most of our customers have moved over to this.
This latest interface has a number of new features, and is built on programming that is more stable and allows us to add new features more easily.
You can read more about the features in the original blog post about Runbox 6.
The change to the latest webmail version also allows those customers previously using Runbox 5 to access the new webmail design called Runbox Aero. This is a modern and more user-friendly design, with graphics that are compatible with the newer high resolution screens featured on laptop and desktop computers.
If you have any questions about this change, please get in touch with us at Runbox Support or email support@nullrunbox.com
We are emphasizing Runbox’ location in Norway as something that is important to you as an email user, and you may wonder why. This article will explain it all.
All your Runbox email is privacy protected because our servers are located in Norway, and Runbox strictly adheres to the Norwegian privacy legislation.First of all, Norway has enacted strong legislation regulating the collection, storage, and processing of personal data, mainly in The Personal Data Act (Lov om behandling av personopplysninger; Personopplysningsloven) and Regulations on the Processing of Personal Data (Forskrift om behandling av personopplysninger; Personopplysningsforskriften).
The first version of The Personal Data Act was implemented as early as 1978. This was a result of the pioneering work provided by the Department of Private Law at the University of Oslo, where one of the first academic teams within IT and privacy worldwide was established in 1970.
Additionally, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet), an independent authority, facilitates protection of individuals from violation of their right to privacy through processing of their personal data. It also verifies that statutes and regulations which apply to the processing of personal data are complied with, and that errors or deficiencies are rectified.
Any complaint against decisions made by The Data Protection Authority may be reported to The Privacy Tribunal (Personvernnemda), another independent authority, for decision.
The Norwegian Criminal Procedure Act (Lov om rettergangsmåten i straffesaker; Straffeloven, unofficial translation) is an important law governing the seizure of objects or data when a criminal act has been reported to the police. Section 211 states that mail may only be seized from an electronic communication service pursuant to a court order.
Another important law in this context is the Norwegian Penal Code (NPC, Almindelig borgelig straffelov; Straffeloven, unofficial translation) which states that it is illegal to access information systems or data unauthorized (NPC §145), and this includes all employees in the public sector (NPC §116).
We must also mention Norwegian Law on Electronic Communications (Lov om elektronisk kommunikasjon; Ekomloven), which regulates telecommunications in Norway. This law contains rules for the interception of electronic communications and for the duration of storage of personal data.
Because Runbox is similar to an Internet service provider and not a telecommunications company, Runbox is NOT affected by this law. This means that Runbox for instance is permitted to delete your email data upon your request at any time, and that we are not required to store any traffic logs.
The bottom line is that a request from Norwegian police authorities to disclose data from any Runbox account will be rejected by Runbox unless a Norwegian court has decided otherwise.
So what does Runbox’ compliance to Norwegian laws mean regarding your personal data when using Runbox, and the content of your emails stored on our servers?
Runbox does not collect any data about you except what is necessary to provide you with our services. This is in accordance with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which is compliant to The Personal Data Act §8. This paragraph states that personal details can only be collected and processed with consent from the registrant.
Similarly important is §11, stating that personal data must not be used for purposes inconsistent with the initial purpose of collection except with consent from the user.
Only if presented with a court ordered seizure pursuant to the Norwegian Criminal Procedure Act may Runbox be forced to disclose information to The Norwegian Police Service. It is therefore an absolute prerequisite that a crime has been committed.
A request from foreign authorities or agencies regarding Runbox account details or user data has a long way to go before it reaches Runbox:
It will in general start with a legal request (letter rogatory) submitted through diplomatic channels to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who sends it to the Attorney General at the Norwegian Office of the Prime Minister, who will, if appropriate, forward the request to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security who in turn sends it to the appropriate police unit, for example the National Criminal Investigation Service, Norway (Den nasjonale enhet for bekjempelse av organisert og annen alvorlig kriminalitet; Kripos) or The Norwegian Police Security Service (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste; PST) for independent investigation. All requests will of course be evaluated with regards to Norwegian laws and regulations.
The Norwegian police authorities may then present Runbox with a subpoena, which will be rejected by Runbox as a matter of principle. The case may then be submitted to a Norwegian court, and an attorney will be appointed to represent the account owner. If the court finds that there is evidence or probable cause for suspicion of criminal activity on the part of the account owner, Runbox may be presented with a court order requesting us to disclose the requested information.
Norway has entered into agreements with some foreign nations to cooperation in criminal matters regarding disclosure of objects and data, that may simplify the procedure above:
Through the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters requests go directly to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, through the Schengen Agreement requests go to the public prosecutor in Norway, and between Nordic countries, requests go to central or local police (district chiefs of police). Requests from Canada and Thailand go directly to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security.
All other nations, the United States included, have to follow the general rule outlined above: Requests must be sent through diplomatic channels to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The agreement between Norway and the United States (and Australia) is about extradition of criminals only, not about assistance in “ordinary” legal matters.
Since Runbox Solutions was founded in 2011 we have received 0 court orders for disclosure of account details or user data. We have received 3 requests directly from attorneys in the United States, all of which have been rejected outright.
According to the laws mentioned above, the Norwegian police authorities can not execute communication control, for instance surveillance of electronic messages, without a valid court order. An independent tribunal, the Control Committee for Wiretapping (Kontrollutvalget for kommunikasjonskontroll) is established to control that the police’s use of wiretapping occurs within the framework of the law and that the use of such methods is as limited as possible.
This means that no surveillance of traffic to or from Runbox can occur unless a valid court order is presented. However, the regulation that governs wiretapping (Forskrift om kommunikasjonskontroll; Kommunikasjonskontrollforskriften) and the Control Committee for Wiretapping do not pertain to intelligence, which is the domain of The Norwegian Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee (Stortingets kontrollutvalg for etterretnings-, overvåkings- og sikkerhetstjeneste), see below.
Let us examine the various Norwegian intelligence agencies and their mandates:
The Norwegian Intelligence Service (Etterretningstjenesten) is a body established in order to survey and monitor civil and military activities outside Norway. This body is not authorized to survey or collect information about Norwegian natural or legal persons, which includes companies. For that reason, Runbox is beyond the authority of this agency.
The Norwegian Police Security Service (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste; PST) do NOT have any legal rights beyond The Norwegian Police Service, which is discussed above.
The Norwegian Defence Security Department (Forsvarets sikkerhetsavdeling, FSA) applies to military institutions only, and is not relevant for Runbox customers at all.
The National Security Authority (Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet, NSM) is established to control governmental and civil institutions regarding security, and because Runbox does not provide services to such institutions, this authority is not relevant to Runbox or our customers.
Joint Counter-terrorism Center (Felles kontraterrorsenter, FKTS), is a recently established department within PST staffed with people from PST and Etterretningstjenesten. FKTS is a cooperation agency sharing information and analyzing terror threats against Norway. FKTS is subject to the laws and regulations governing the activities of The Norwegian Police Security Service and the Norwegian Intelligence Service.
In order to monitor these agencies and ensure they are acting in accordance with laws and regulations, the Norwegian Parliament has established The Norwegian Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee (Stortingets kontrollutvalg for etterretnings-, overvåkings- og sikkerhetstjeneste), and Control Committee for Wiretapping (Kontrollutvalget for kommunikasjonskontroll). Their mandate is to ensure that the police’s use of wiretapping is in accordance with the law and is as limited as possible.
All your Runbox email stored on our servers is safe because Runbox is located in Norway. Runbox strictly adheres to the Norwegian Personal Data Act and the Norwegian Criminal Procedure Act, which is the main legislation governing our operations. This fact, along with our ethics, prevent us from doing anything unauthorized with your data.
Specifically, Runbox protects your data against disclosure requested by the authorities because they must present a valid court order to seize any data. Such a court order is difficult to obtain, because it must be based on evidence of criminal activity related to the account owner.
Norwegian authorities are not allowed to perform surveillance of data traffic without a valid court order. Norway has established independent agencies to ensure that these agencies follow the laws and regulations under which they operate. In addition, Norway is an open democracy with a critical and investigative press which readily publicizes any suspicion of breached laws and regulations.
Any foreign nation asking for data have to send a formal request according to established protocols and strict rules. And any such legal request will be scrutinized by Norwegian judicial authorities, and only in cases where Norwegian law is breached could a request result in a court ordered seizure which is necessary to obtain data from Runbox.
In short, no authority or agency can monitor Runbox’ data or traffic without a court order, which can only be issued on evidence of criminal activity in violation of Norwegian penal code.
Runbox customers automatically have an advantage by storing their email in Norway, and you can add another layer of protection by encrypting your communication with Runbox.
To protect your privacy even further, Runbox does NOT use Google Analytics or any other third-party tracking of our customers’ usage. We never use data or traffic information for any other purpose than anonymous statistics in order to improve our services and our system’s performance. Our service is absolutely ad-free, and we do not share or sell your personal details to anyone.
The combination of the strict Norwegian legal environment, our solid IT infrastructure, Runbox’ ethics and Privacy Policy, and the technology Runbox provides, means that Runbox provides a service that is uniquely private and secure.
For more information about the privacy and security of Runbox’ services, please see the following links — and feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.
As each day goes by there seem to be new revelations about which countries are spying on each other, or have secret agreements to monitor traffic by putting “taps” on strategically important cables entering or leaving countries. It is hard to keep track of all this information, and even harder to verify what is fact and what is speculation.
If you care about your data or email and whether it is private or not, then all of this should bother you; in fact it should bother you quite a lot. But how do you make sense of it all, and what action can you take, assuming you can take action that is? Which countries will look after your data best? And who can actually read your email as it is delivered to and from your email provider?
At Runbox we get asked a lot of questions like the ones above, and we have come to the conclusion that often we are worrying about the wrong things.
The United States National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have featured heavily in the media, and along with three other countries (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) they make up the so called “Five Eyes” countries that are known to be monitoring communications.
These countries have an agreement to share data that they collect through their extensive networks. This is not speculation, this is hard fact in the public domain, and together they form the single biggest data sharing network ever conceived. The allegations that they spy on each others citizens and then share data with each other to get around domestic regulations relating to spying on your own citizens is one of the most controversial claims that have been made in the last few years.
There are other revelations that suggest many countries also have agreements with the NSA and GCHQ in return for various kind of technological assistance that might benefit the collaborating nation.
More recently, and closer to home for Runbox, we have seen allegations that Denmark is monitoring data entering and leaving Norway, and that Sweden is pretty much in league with the NSA about as much as the other “five eyes” countries. At a glance this can seem worrying given that Runbox is based in Norway.
But does it really matter?
On a political front it probably does matter, but on a practical level if you email someone who is outside of Norway the chances are the data passes through a number of countries and worrying about the ones geographically adjacent to Norway seems a little pointless. For example, if you email anyone on Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud or any of the other major providers, the chance is your data is going to end up in the one country that is at the centre of the recent revelations – the USA.
The reason we get asked questions about security is because people want to take positive action to protect their data, so what can you actually do?
The question about which email provider will protect your data best when it is on their servers is a separate issue to the one surrounding your data when it is being transferred from one place to another. In respect of your email provider, you are better to keep your email data in a country that has strong privacy laws, and with a provider that tries to encrypt the transfer of that data to and from your account. Runbox is based in a country that does have strong privacy laws, and we always try to encrypt your data when transferring it to and from your account.
So choosing an email provider isn’t too difficult once you know what to look for.
Given that we know agencies are monitoring Internet communications (it doesn’t matter how much or little of this is going on) it is best to assume that anything that you do on the Internet, or anything you email can be monitored by someone. You can think of this as being like sending a private message on a postcard through the usual mail where everyone including the post office and your family can read the postcard.
Fundamentally the data that makes up your email can be read by any server it passes through on its way to its destination. Mail servers also write information to their hard drives and then use that data when sending your email on to the next destination. This means that temporary copies of your email are also made!
There is very little you can do about this, it’s how email works.
An obvious solution to prevent prying eyes from reading your email is to use some sort of code that only the sender and recipient can decode, and that is exactly what encryption is. If you encrypt a message with a strong enough key then it is currently not possible for anyone to read it without having the private key and passphrase. For now we will ignore allegations that encryption has been subverted by governments as it is clear that strong encryption does still work adequately.
Regardless of whether you encrypt messages yourself, Runbox attempts to encrypt your email when it sends to and receives email from other providers on your behalf. This is an important security feature, but it isn’t universally used and even some major email providers do not offer this kind of encryption. Where it is not offered your email is delivered unencrypted and it is just as vulnerable to interception then as a postcard is.
Email is about 40 years old, and it hasn’t changed much in all that time. For decades computer security experts have been aware of the insecure nature of email, which is why email encryption has been around for about half the time email has existed. Encrypting your 
email is not a new idea at all, but as a proportion of email sent very little is encrypted by the sender.
The best overall solution is to encrypt the message before it leaves your computer and not rely on anyone else to protect the data for you. The data can then only be decrypted at the recipients end if the correct key is available and the passphrase for that key is known. This is called end-to-end encryption.
There are various ways in which you can encrypt your email, some involve email client (app/program) like Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail and others are integrated in to the webmail service of email providers.
Encrypting your email is not as difficult as you might think, but you might need to make some changes to how you use email.
We are used to having a very wide variety of email providers at our fingertips, and encryption isn’t necessarily going to be compatible with all of those various interfaces. Elsewhere on this blog and on the Runbox help website we explain some of the easier ways to implement strong email encryption that can be used with most email providers.
Yes, you are going to have to give your friends, family and colleagues keys so they can decrypt email and also send encrypted email to you, but is that really much more difficult than having to give them a key to get in to your home (assuming you want them in your home that is)?
If you encrypt your email it won’t matter what revelations are in the news next week, only you and your recipients will be able to read your email. Unless of course the revelations are about encryption having been compromised…
In order to further simplify our price plans and improve our offering we have decided to increase the email alias quota of all account subscriptions to 100 (except the Max plan which already has it).
This change has already taken effect, which you can tell from the Alias Administration screen.
If you are wondering what an email alias is and what it can be used for, it’s basically an alternative email address pointing to your Runbox account. This is very useful in order to manage identities/profiles, especially if you host a domain with Runbox.
For more information and tips, head over to our help page on Aliases!
In order to simplify our Price Plans and improve the reliability of messages sent from Runbox, we are introducing standard quotas on email bandwidth usage per week and on the daily outgoing message limit across all subscription plans (with a few important exceptions).
Please continue reading to find out what is being changed and how this may affect your account. We will also notify all our customers by email within the next few days.
As of June 1, 2014 we will make the following changes to the Runbox subscription plans (with a few exceptions):
*) Those who have purchased extra quotas will of course keep them, and we will accommodate those who do need to send a larger number of messages — please see below for details.
If you are unsure about which subscription plan you currently have, please see Account > Subscription Information.
The recent revelations in the media of mass surveillance of online communication especially in the US has brought many new customers to Runbox over the past months. This has lead Runbox to garner international attention by publications such as Der Spiegel and The New York Times, and Runbox has gained a position as a leading provider of secure and private email services.
In accordance with our growth strategy we have invested heavily in new hardware to replace and modernize our server park, which will increase our capacity and further improve the reliability and security of our services.
While we continue to roll out these upgrades we have reviewed our subscription plans and decided to simplify and adapt the bandwidth and outgoing message quotas.
Our growing number of customers access their email on an increasing number of laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Additionally, people increasingly use email to share multimedia files such as images and videos.
The new hardware we have installed greatly improves our ability to support this “email-on-the-go” trend and we have therefore decided to upgrade the bandwidth quota to a level corresponding to the Max subscription plan for all existing and future accounts.
With many more people sending digital photographs and videos to friends, family, and colleagues, this new higher quota will allow you to make even better usage of our market leading 100MB attachment size.
There are two different reasons for the change of outgoing message quotas:
1) A few of our customers send a large amount of legitimate email. While our systems cope well with this, there is an ever increasing volume and therefore cost to processing this kind of email. There is also an increase in staff time dealing with any issues that arise as a result of recipients sometimes reporting such email as spam.
We see that those who send large amounts of bulk email don’t necessarily need large storage quotas, so we have decided to decouple the outgoing message quota from the subscription plans. You can then freely purchase outgoing message quota upgrades independently of your subscription plan.
Please note that this change need not affect your account as you can keep your current quota upon request.
2) Runbox enforces a strict policy on email sent from our service. Unfortunately, some of our customers still have poor password or computer hygiene, which in some cases can cause their Runbox account to be used by spammers to max out the currently very high outgoing message quotas.
This not only causes problems for the account owner, but sending large amounts of unsolicited email via our outgoing mail servers can potentially affect all our customers. If a receiving server detects that unsolicited email has been sent from one of our servers, Runbox may be blacklisted and in turn be prevented from reliably delivering email sent by our customers.
By lowering the outgoing message quota we protect all accounts from jeopardizing the reputation of Runbox’ mail servers. You as a Runbox customer will benefit directly because email sent from reputable mail servers are delivered promptly and reliably to their recipients’ Inboxes.
As part of our aforementioned server upgrades we will have the ability to implement new security features that will also help protect customers’ accounts.
The bandwidth quota change will only affect your subscription positively if at all, since all subscription plans will now have the maximum 10 GB bandwidth limit per week. With many more people sending digital photographs and videos to friends, family, and colleagues, this new higher quota will allow you to make better use of our market leading 100 MB attachment size.
The outgoing message quota adjustment will only affect customers who send more than 500 messages per day. Please note that the number of messages equals the total number of recipients, because e.g. 1 message with 20 recipients is 20 messages when delivered from our servers.
If you need a higher outgoing message volume we will restore the old quota upon request.
Customers who have paid specifically for increased outgoing message quotas will keep their full quotas as long as they are renewed.
If you are unsure about your current outgoing message quota, please refer to our subscription plans.
We hope you will understand that these changes are not only necessary but beneficial to Runbox and you as a Runbox customer.
And please let us know by contacting Support if you have any questions or concerns about these changes.
