From time to time we get asked why Runbox uses runbox.com as our primary email domain rather than our runbox.no domain.
The reason we are asked this is because some people assume that by using a .com domain all the Internet traffic to and from our servers is routed via the Unites States, and could be subject to US government eavesdropping.
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 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.
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.
We had 2 hours of downtime today that was caused by electrical problems that took out our Top of the Rack switches.
The problem was between 14:00 and 16:00 and was fixed by an electrician at the data center.
We are very sorry about the problems this caused for our users and we will be looking at ways to avoid any similar event in the future.
You can follow us on Twitter for more instant updates: https://twitter.com/runbox
UPDATE: After the power outage one of the spam filter servers did not restart as it should have, causing some spam to not be caught. The server is being restarted now and spam filtering should return to normal shortly.
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).
There are currently network issues between Runbox and a number of locations in the US, Asia, and Europe:
http://www.host-tracker.com/InstantCheck/ResultComplete/9e7cfdaa-80b8-e411-80bf-00155d368c3c
We are working with our ISP to find out what this is caused by and will keep you updated.
If you receive a message with the subject “Dear Runbox User” or “RUNBOX.COM” (or similar) which asks you for your Runbox username and password, or asks you to click on a suspicious link, then please delete the message. We are deleting all the instances of this message we can find in Runbox accounts, but we might miss some.
These messages are not sent from Runbox staff and is an attempt to trick Runbox customers into entering their login information at a malicious website.
When Runbox contacts you we will always address you by your name, and we will never ask you for your login details.
For more information about phishing, please see the Phishing section of this article.
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.
For security reasons we have turned off SSLv3 on POP connections (port 995) today. That means we now only allow TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 on POP connections.
As a Runbox user you should not have to do anything — your email program should already support TLS and use it automatically. If not, please make sure your email program is up-to-date.
Apple Mail users: Please see our notice regarding APOP.
If you do experience any problems, please contact Runbox Support.
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.
