Say hello to Criptext: an email experience built around your privacy
We’ve been hard at work for the past 10 months developing the world’s most private email system. We took a deep look at how email services work and found a way to make emails more private, without hindering ease of use. Although there’s much work still left to be done, today, we’re finally launching the beta version of Criptext’s new hyper secure email service.
For the first time the world has an email service that is built entirely around protecting people’s privacy. So what makes it so special? Well, among many other things, Criptext doesn’t collect your data in its servers. Instead, your entire inbox is stored in your device alone. What’s more, Criptext uses the open source Signal Protocol library to encrypt each email from end to end.
Part of our guiding principle has been the idea of returning ownership and control back to the user. Sticking to that idea, Criptext is designed to never have access to your encryption keys. Unlike other secure email services, Criptext’s encryption keys are generated and stored exclusively on your device.
Now, privacy and security is important, but it’s useless if the app is clunky and difficult to use, that is why we focused heavily on building a UI/UX that made our email app so easy to use, you’d even forget how secure it was.
It’s still a beta 💻
Although we poured a lot of work into this product, it’s important to consider that Criptext is still in beta. We have many improvements and enhancements on our pipeline before we get to a v1.0. That said, the most important improvements to be made are not the ones in our pipeline, but rather the ones that are yet to be called out by the community of early adopters who’ll be providing us with valuable feedback. Ultimately, Criptext launched in beta for a very specific reason: we want v1.0 to be a result of the collaborative efforts of us and the open source community.
Yes, that’s right, Criptext is an open source project. All our code for our mobile and desktop apps are public and we designed it this way for two reasons. First, we want to provide full transparency to the privacy and security community so that anyone can verify for themselves that Criptext indeed works as advertised. Second, we hope that our vision for a hyper-secure, privacy focused email service would resonate with the open source community and anyone could pitch in and collaborate on the project.
What’s next?
Now that our mobile and desktop apps are publicly available, we’re going to be paying close attention to user feedback so we can start that polishing process that will lead to a v1.0. If you’d like to help out in development process feel free to get in touch with us via twitter @Criptext or emailing us at developer@criptext.com and check out Criptext on GitHub. If you’re not a developer and still wanna help, we’re eager to listen to your feedback. Write to us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. Oh, did we mention that we’re hiring? Head on to Criptext to join our team.
We have no doubt that Criptext will be destabilizing the almost perfect competition that exists in the secure email space. However, we don’t consider ProtonMail, Hushmail or any of the other players as ‘competitors’ per se. Instead, we see them as collaborators in a shared vision for a world where digital privacy rights are protected. We hope our presence is embraced by everyone else in the secure email market and that our competition breeds innovation that benefits users globally.
Finally, we want to leave this announcement by saying that no matter what challenges lie on the road ahead, everything we do will revolve around protecting your privacy. One thing is for certain: like most startups, we’ll stumble along the way, but we’ll work day in and day out to make Criptext a better and more robust email experience. For all those early adopters who’re embarking on this journey with us we want to thank you for your patience and commitment.
On behalf of the entire Criptext team, thank you for joining our beta!
