When you access web pages and other services such as email a whole range of things go on in the background to ensure that your request for a web page or accessing your email is achieved no matter where you are in the World, or which Internet Service Provider (ISP) you are using at the time. As part of that process, the companies that provide these services can do some useful things to ensure that your access is as fast and as reliable as possible.

Edge services

One thing service providers can do is make use of edge services that move data and processing closer to the location of the device you are using. This will mean that when you access the service the route that the data takes is shorter geographically, and that a central data centre is not having to handle all the network traffic and processing. This reduces the time it takes from when you perform some action on your device to when you get the response from the service. This is often referred to as latency.

As more and more devices become connected to the Internet, and 5G mobile services are rolled out fast responsiveness will become increasingly important for providing a good experience.

Runbox and edge services

Despite all the benefits of edge services and why they are used, we are pleased to say that Runbox doesn’t use any of them – and for good reason.

We understand that privacy and knowing who looks after you data is important to you as a Runbox customer, and to that end we are happy to say that we can offer you the confidence of knowing where your email is stored no matter where you access it from.

We only store your email on servers that are located in a data centre in Oslo, Norway. In addition to our own security features, it is protected by the highly regarded legislation of Norway which is very focused on the privacy of communications and data more generally.

All networks point to Norway

When you access your email with an email program or via our web interface data to and from your phone is routed between your location and Oslo, and the only place your data can be accessed from is the servers in Oslo.

Between you and our data centre the data can travel across many networks with your current ISP at one end and ours at the Oslo end. However, all our services encrypt your data between your device and our servers and this means the email content isn’t readable as it passes through the ISPs that provide your connection to us.

We believe that rather than distributing your data to data centres around the World, it is important for it to be treated as a valuable commodity and give it location specific protection. This means all access to your data is in accordance with Norwegian law.

Internet routing

Runbox doesn’t control the entire route of your data to our servers, and the further from Oslo you are the less influence our choice of ISPs has on the route your data takes.

The geographical distance between you and our servers can make a difference to how responsive our servers appear to be. This is because of the number of ISPs and routers involved in the network between you and us, as well as the quality and speed of the service those ISPs provide.

Usually this doesn’t cause any significant issues and we have happy customers in 170 countries including Australia and New Zealand, which is about a far as you can get from Oslo. However, sometimes it can cause an issue and we can help customers try to deal with this if they contact us.

Speeding up your email access

While we are pleased to offer the certainty of knowing where you data is stored, we are also keen to make sure that you have a good experience using Runbox.

Using an email program like Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail and therefore having your mail stored on your device can improve access to your messages. Doing this means that instead of having to download details for all of your messages each time you access your account, mail that has already been downloaded to your device is already there and only new messages need to be fetched from the server.

Using an email program is a great idea for many reasons and not just because it helps solve potential network issues, but also because of the ability to manage more than one email account in the same interface, use the local search capabilities of the email program and access previous messages when you don’t have an Internet connection.

And now we can speed up your web access too

Recently we’ve introduced local storage to the Runbox webmail in the form of the Runbox 7 web app. When you log in to the new interface you will be given the choice to download an index of all your messages that will be stored in your web browser. This index will remain there and be updated as new mail arrives until you decide to delete it. We also pre-load the content of the messages that are shown in your message list so that when you open the message the content is already on your device ready to be shown to you. This makes Runbox 7 a very fast webmail client with excellent search capabilities.

Know where your email is, wherever you are

So not only do you have the peace of mind knowing where your email is stored when it arrives in your account, but you also have the option to store it securely on your own personal devices for even greater performance.

This means you don’t need to worry about what edge services are doing with your data, because with Runbox you know where your email is, wherever you are!

Continue Reading →

How we did it and what we learned on the way

In our blog post May 25, 2018 we described the main areas of Runbox’ GDPR implementation.

On this Data Privacy Day we’d like to update you on our GDPR implementation, how we did it, and what we learned on the way.

There is an enormous amount of information out there describing GDPR content, simple copies of the regulation, some templates of varying quality – and a lot of warnings.

So first of all, let’s recap what the GDPR is.

What is the GDPR, and why did it come about?

In 2012, the European Union (EU) first proposed a set of rules for protection of data inside and outside the EU. An important reason for this decision was a desire to improve the ability for individuals to control data registered about themselves.

In 2016, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to take effect for all individuals within the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA).

Runbox’ approach to the GDPR

At Runbox, which is located in the privacy bastion Norway and within the EEA, we started the GDPR planning and implementation process as early as 2014.

At that point in time, we had followed the process in the EU about a comprehensive reform of the EU’s 1995 data protection rules. In the spring of 2014, the European Parliament demonstrated strong support for the GDPR proposal set forward by the Article 29 Working Party. (You can find more information about the history of the GDPR in the article The History of the General Data Protection Regulation.) Shortly thereafter, in September 2014, our GDPR Compliancy Project was launched.

We didn’t know at that time when the GDPR would take effect, but we knew the direction – that is: The GDPR was indicated to move in the direction of existing Norwegian privacy regulations, based on Article 29 Working Party documents.

Our GDPR project plan

We structured our implementation project in 14 partly parallel sub-projects, and after the decision by the European Parliament and of the Council by April 27, 2016, we updated our project plan towards the target date May 25, 2018.

We started out mapping exactly our position compared to Article 29 proposal, which in 2015 was replaced by The European Data Protection Board, and then we went ahead to work out our main planning document, Rules and Regulations for Information Security Management.

The groundwork was done, and we proceeded the project towards fulfillment of our obligations regarding privacy under the new legislation, implemented in Norwegian law by July 20, 2018.

We will share more information in forthcoming blog posts, so stay tuned!

Continue Reading →

In the last blog post we outlined how you can use aliases to help organise you email, and also how they can help you deal with unsolicited or marketing email. Aliases offer alternative addresses for your account so that you don’t have to use the same address for everything. However, there is a quicker way to create new addresses on your account that doesn’t need you to log in to your account and set anything up. This is sub-addressing (sometimes called plus addressing or tagged addressing).

Sub-addressing has a big plus

The key to sub-addressing is including a + and some text after it (called the tag). This goes after the username and before the @ symbol.

When our mail servers see this for incoming mail it knows that everything before the + is the username and so it can still deliver to the correct account.

Even though the mail system delivers to your usual account, the message is still addressed to username+tag@nullrunbox.com and you can use this in various ways. Sub-addressing had a lot of uses and is easy to use.

• just make up the addresses as you go along without the need to set them up in your Runbox account.
• use a sub-address for anything where you might want to identify the place where you used your email address.
• use a different tag for each online website you sign up for so that if one leaks your address you know which one.
• create a filter to delete email to that particular sub-address if it starts receiving spam.
• filter email to specific folders based on the sub-addressing.

Works with all usernames and aliases

Sub-addressing works with all the Runbox domains, with your own domain if you using one, and with aliases (e.g. alias+tag@nullrunbox.com).

Unlike aliases you can’t delete a email address in this format, because you never set it up in the first place. If you do get unwanted mail to an address in this sub-address format you can deal with it in two ways.

• use a filter in your Runbox account to delete it or filter it to spam.
• if it is set up on an alias delete the alias, but this means that any other sub-addresses using that alias will also stop working.

Something else you should know

Although sub-addressing is part of the official specification for email systems, not all email providers implement it. That might mean some websites will not accept an email address with a + in it, and some email services may not allow sending to addresses in that format. If you do come across problems, please let the website or email provider know that they could be supporting this useful address format. If you prefer, let us know and we will try to get in touch with them.

The good news is that most major email services (and those that like to do things properly) do use sub-addressing and this means you are not likely to come across problems very often.

If you need any help with sub-addressing please take a look at our help page about sub-addressing, or contact Runbox Support.

Continue Reading →