Malware and Your Privacy: How to Defend Against Digital Threats

Malware poses a significant threat to our personal information and security. From ransomware to keyloggers, malicious software programs can infiltrate our devices and compromise our most sensitive data, including contact lists. In this post, we’ll explore how malware works, the risks it presents, and the potential consequences of a breach.

What is Malware?

Malware, short for malicious software, is any software designed to harm, exploit, or compromise the functionality of a computer or network. One of the primary goals of many malware types is to steal sensitive information. Here’s how it works:

Malware often enters a device through infected downloads, email attachments, or compromised websites. Users may inadvertently install it by clicking on malicious links or accepting untrustworthy downloads.

Once installed, the malware can access various parts of the system. Spyware, for instance, can monitor keystrokes and capture personal information, while other types may directly search for files containing sensitive data.

Many malware types can scan for contact lists stored on devices, and extract names, phone numbers, and email addresses. This information can then be used for spam, phishing attacks, or sold on the dark web.

Types of Malware

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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.

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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.

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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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Privacy Matters – How Our Personal Data Is Used

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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Email malware botnet dismantled by the FBI

Runbox was recently informed via our Internet Service Provider that a global botnet (robot network) consisting of hundreds of thousands of computers has been disrupted by the FBI.

In a coordinated operation taking place on August 29 in the US and several European countries, the malware (malicious software) known as Qakbot was removed from a large number of infected computers around the world.

What is Qaknet?

Since 2008, Qakbot had spread to victim computers mainly through spam email messages that contained malicious attachments or links. The infected computers effectively comprised a multinational infrastructure that cybercriminals utilized to commit ransomware, financial fraud, and other criminal activities.

In recent years the Qaknet botnet grew rapidly and some estimates state that it was related to around 25% of malware websites and responsible for extorting their victims through ransom payments amounting to tens of millions of dollars over the past couple of years.

Protecting your email account

As a security and privacy conscious email service we welcome this news and congratulate law enforcement on disrupting a vast network of cyber criminals who have victimized individuals and businesses on a large scale for decades.

Qaknet has also impacted some Runbox customers and we are contacting those affected directly via email in order to ensure their accounts are secured.

We strongly recommend that all email users utilize antivirus and antimalware software in addition to the spam and virus filters that are available in your email account. You can find a comparison of such software for various platforms at Wikipedia.

More information

More information about the dismantling of Qaknet can be found here:

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Phishing: What it is and how to avoid being scammed

There’s an uptick in phishing emails again. Here’s a refresher.

In the past few weeks there have been a series of phishing attacks aimed at a small subset of Runbox customers. The goal of these scams is to trick unsuspecting email users into clicking on malicious web links and entering their Runbox username and password, enabling the scammers to steal their password.

At Runbox we are constantly on guard against phishing attacks against our customers, and here we take a closer look at this increasing problem and some simple steps you can take to protect yourself.

As a summary, ensure that you check:

  1. The From address. Phishing messages almost always come from a random email address that do not match our list of Official Runbox Email Addresses.
  2. The message addresses you by name. Scammers typically only have lists of email addresses without any first or last names, so if the message does not address you by your first and last name it is likely to be a scam.
  3. The legitimacy of any email with links. Check where the link will actually take you. Hover over it with your mouse, and you can see whether it will in fact take you to some random address not associated with Runbox at all.
  4. Any false urgency. Runbox will never pressure you to act suddenly. Scammers may try to create a sense of urgency to persuade you to do what they’re asking.

What is phishing?

Example of a recent phishing message

Phishing is a type of cyber attack in which an attacker attempts to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, or credit card details by posing as a trustworthy entity via email messages.

The word “phishing” is derived from fishing and refers to using lures to “fish” for sensitive information. Phishing attacks typically use social engineering to gain a victim’s trust, and use spoofing such as faking an email address or URL to make the attack appear legitimate.

When phishing attacks are targeted at certain services or individuals it’s called “spear phishing”, and in this case they appear to be sent from Runbox Support, the Runbox Team, or other similar official sounding names.

Email users who are unfortunate enough to receive a spear phishing message and end up divulging their Runbox login details can end up having their Runbox accounts hijacked and used to send spam, which then forces us to suspend the accounts until the customer can regain access.

With access to an email user’s account the attackers may then be able to access their personal information and use it to commit fraud or identity theft, which can in turn result in financial loss or worse.

Naturally such account hijacking causes much confusion for the affected customers in addition to the privacy intrusion and consequences for the recipients of the spam being sent, which is often another phishing scam. The phishing then continues to cascade to new groups of innocent users of other email services, while exploiting people’s trust and rarely being caught.

It is important to understand that these scammers are criminals, and that being tricked into disclosing any login details can have serious consequences.

How to spot phishing

The easiest way to see whether a message is in fact from Runbox is to check the From address, as phishing emails almost always come from a random email address not on any Runbox domain names such as runbox.com.

Example of legitimate email from Runbox

You can find more details on this here: How can I tell whether an email is legitimate?

Another important clue is whether the email addresses you by name, or whichever name you have entered in your Runbox Account details. Attackers typically only have lists of email addresses without any first or last names, so if the message does not address you by name it is likely to be a scam.

The third way to check the legitimacy of any email which asks you to click on a link, is to check where the link will actually take you. Some phishing links look like they link to a Runbox web page, but if you hover over it with your mouse, you can see that it will in fact take you to some random address not associated with Runbox at all.

If in doubt, go to our main website Runbox at https://runbox.com for information, or contact us via Runbox Support at https://support.runbox.com.

Do not be fooled or threatened by the scams

Most phishing emails have a very urgent and even threatening tone, trying to scare the recipient into acting right away to avoid having their account shut down or disrupted.

The scammers might even read our blog or other web pages and notice that we have two webmail versions, and subsequently send messages claiming that if you don’t switch to the newer version within X days, then your account will be shut down, for instance.

Legitimate messages from the Runbox Team will always give notice about something happening in the future, or optional new features.

Catching the scammers

We are constantly working to improve our defenses against phishing attacks, spam, and viruses, and we take immediate action to remove spear phishing messages as soon as we become aware of an attack.

If you have received any scam emails like the ones described above without responding in any way then your account is perfectly safe. We do however appreciate you notifying us via Runbox Support at https://support.runbox.com so that we can take steps to protect you and our other customers against the attack.

We also highly recommend enabling our Two-Factor Authentication features, which will keep your account safe even if your password should be stolen. For more on this, please see our Account Security Help page at https://help.runbox.com/account-security/.

If you have any doubts about an email you have received, then please don’t hesitate to contact Runbox Support at https://support.runbox.com.

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GDPR implementation part 7: Information and Tools for Implementation of Users’ Rights

GDPR

One of the main objectives for the European Union (EU) when they developed the replacement for the Data Protection Directive 95/46 (from 1995), was to expand individual control over the use of personal data.

This can be seen in a broader view as an implementation of the right to one’s private life, as laid down in the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 8). The right to respect for one’s private and family life is also stated in the EU Treaty on Fundamental Rights (Article 7).

Norway has signed both of these agreements, and the Constitution of Norway implements these rights in Article 100 and 102 of the Constitution and in the Norwegian Human Rights Act.

Already in GDPR1 Article 1 we see the connection between the GDPR and especially the Treaty on Fundamental Rights:

This Regulation protects fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons and in particular their right to the protection of personal data

Article 1-2 of the GDPR

Observe the expression “rights and freedoms of natural persons“, which is very important throughout the Regulation and is used 31 times in all.

Before we go further into the subject of this post, it is important to state that Norway’s legislation on the processing of personal data was already compliant with the GDPR before the latter was declared as the new framework for the legislation in Norway. The Norwegian Personal Data Act (PDA2), as compliant with the GDPR, tok effect 20 July 2018.

First and foremost, the GDPR states that no processing of personal data shall be done unless the data subject has given consent (Article 6-1, a). Runbox obtains consent to registration of our users’ personal data when they sign up for an account and accept our Terms of Service.

The GDPR (Article 6-1, ff.) allows a controller – that is Runbox in our context – to process personal data when there is a legitimate reason for doing so, i.e. something that is necessary to use our services.

It is an important objective for the GDPR to secure one’s control of one’s own personal data. In this respect, the GDPR has given the data subjects eight fundamental rights (Article 15—17).

When implementing these rights in Runbox, we found that most of those were already there. However, the introduction of the GDPR provided us with a checklist and the opportunity to analyze our status, and to improve our services in this respect.

Our Privacy Policy provides exhaustive information about how we process personal data, but here is an overview of the data subject’s rights, and our implementation of them:

  • The right to access (Article 15): Since Runbox does not collect other types of information than what the users register by themselves, they can easily check which personal data is processed. The data processing is only done in order to process your emails, and optionally your web site and domain name.
  • The right to rectification (Article 16): You may at any time log in to your email account and change your personal information.
  • The right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’) (Article 17): You may terminate your subscription any time, and your account contents will subsequently be deleted after 6 months. Your personal details data will be deleted after 5 years in accordance with Norwegian accounting regulations. However, you may send a request to dataprotectionofficer@nullrunbox.com for immediate erasure of your account contents.
  • The right to restriction of processing (Article 18): Runbox will never use your personal information for purposes other than providing our services to you, so restrictions are not necessary in our context.
  • The right to be informed (Article 19): Runbox uses your personal information only in order to provide our services to you..
  • The right to data portability (Article 20): In case that you wish to move to another email service provider and export your data, you will find information on how to do this through our services and documentation.
  • The right to object (Article 21): Since we never will use your personal data for other purposes than to deliver the services you have agreed to, this right is implicitly fulfilled.
  • The right to individual decision-making (Article 22): This article is intended to protect data subjects against automated data-processing that might involve profiling them based on personally identifiable information, which is something Runbox doesn’t do.

Regarding questions or concerns about our implementation of the GDPR, customers may use the email address dataprotectionofficer@nullrunbox.com as a direct channel to our appointed Data Protection Officer.

Some final remarks about consent: Runbox uses cookies in order to provide our services, and new users must give express consent to this on our signup page. On this page, and on the Account page once logged in, you may also give/revoke consent to future news and offers from Runbox.

In our next post in this series, we will consider our contractual situation regarding GDPR requirements. Stay tuned.

Footnotes

1. The GDPR means Regulation EU 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46 / EC General Data Protection, General Data Processing Regulation. Article refers to Article in the GDPR, unless stated otherwise.

2. The Personal Data Act (the PDA) means the regulations that are currently in force in Norway for the protection of individuals in connection with the processing of personal data, which includes the implementation of GDPR in Norway (2018-07-20).

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