14 DAY TRIAL // Encrypted email service Tutanota says the privacy era has finally started, more than three years after the Snowden leaks, and the company gained half a million users in three months.
In recent months, as the world has taken a turn towards more extremist political views, secure mail service Tutanota has seen an exponential growth in users and popularity. The trend, the company said, started back in mid-2016, but has taken off since the beginning of this year.
According to Matthias Pfau, Tutanota co-founder, a year ago the service had 1 million users. At the end of 2016, the number had grown to 1.5 million, only to surpass 2 million already.
"We are confident that this is only the start of a new trend; a new trend where people finally understand that privacy matters and look for secure alternatives for their online communications. This is very important because, with steadily growing mass surveillance, we need to encrypt our data so that no-one can spy on it. Tutanota encrypts the entire mailbox automatically so that everybody can use encryption without even thinking about it. That's why we, as well as other privacy-focused services, enable this trend. We hope that one day everybody will use an encrypted mailbox, simply because it is easily available!" Pfau told Softpedia over email.
Privacy is key
Not only is Tutanota becoming more popular but so are privacy-focused search engines like Duckduckgo or Qwant.
"Our users say they are sick of all this online spying that is going on. They are also sick of being constantly exposed to targeted advertisements. That's why they appreciate a secure mail service such as Tutanota so much. That's also why they use privacy-focused search engines like Duckduckgo and Qwant," said Matthias Pfau, Tutanota co-founder.
What's driving the masses? Well, it seems that political extremism. The trend in politics we've seen over the past few months and years, in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and even the United States with some statements given by Trump thus far, people are more and more concerned about their privacy. Other worrisome actions have been taken in France, Austria, and even Germany.
Nowadays, Tutanota ranks higher than it ever has. Alexa places it in the 35,000s globally and 18,000s in the United States. Privacy-oriented search engines are also growing steadily, with DuckDuckGo ranking 506th at a global level (and 330th in the US) and Qwant ranking 4,020 globally (and 139th in the US).
"Our emails contain a lot of sensitive personal data: Communication with banks and state agencies, appointments, services we subscribe to, private communications with friends and family. It is essential that this information cannot be abused - neither by attackers, nor by the authorities, nor by the mail service (i.e., Gmail, Yahoo) that hosts our mails. That's why we need end-to-end encryption. This way no-one can spy on our emails, and people are increasingly understanding this," Pfau told us.