Criptext is a terrible Gmail alternative
Seriously, if you’re looking to replace Gmail, look elsewhere because Criptext is the polar opposite.
With an user base of 1.4b users, Gmail is by far the most popular email service in the world. However, recently it came under heavy public scrutiny after news reports published that Gmail still lets third parties read your emails. Beyond the clear privacy breach, this was a surprise to everyone considering that in 2017 Gmail said it stopped reading users’ emails for ad purposes. Take note that it says “for ad purposes” because they can/do still read your emails for “product improvement purposes” — how else do you think google suggests replies?
Anyhow, the aforementioned reports on 3rd party developers having access to Gmail users’ data has lead consumers frightened for their privacy. As a result we’ve seen a barrage of articles suggesting alternative email services to Gmail, none of which mention Criptext. Paradoxically, this is something that we’re proud of, and I’ll explain why.
2018 has been a year riddled with privacy breaches in the tech industry. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica crisis proved once more that tech companies amass, sell and distribute user data in such a massive scale that it’s able to influence the outcome of presidential elections. In August it was revealed that Yahoo Mail, the world’s third biggest email service, reads your emails and sells the data to advertisers. Finally, just last week facebook faced a data breach that affected over 50m users. The result of this is an increase in consciousness by users around the world about their tech companies collecting their data and its negative implications. In all these afore mentioned events of privacy breaches there’s a common theme: data collection. User data in the hands of service providers is always at risk of being misused and leaked. In this sense, we believe true privacy is achieved when service providers collect as little data as possible from their users — ideally, none at all. Tech companies have always advocated that data collection is necessary to improve the product or to provide their services effectively, however, just this week in an interview with Vice, Apple’s Tim Cook debunked this saying:
“Whoever’s telling you that — it’s a bunch of bonk”
And here’s where Criptext comes in. You see, every email service out there, including the encrypted ones, collects users’ emails in their servers. This is the reason why you can log into your inbox from anyone’s computer. Now, Criptext is not like every other email service because we don’t store users’ emails in our servers. Instead, Criptext only stores your emails on your device. Furthermore, encryption keys are also stored and generated locally in your device. We look at data as something holy that should be in the hands of he/she who creates it. Our goal is to provide the most private email service possible, which is why we give complete control back to the user. Your data, your control — it’s that simple. We’ve focused on building an email service that mimics the security and privacy offered by Signal and WhatsApp, which is why implemented the Signal Protocol to encrypt all emails. What’s more, Criptext is unlike Gmail in that all our code is open for the world to see and verify that it works the way we say it does. And we do this for one simple reason: we believe transparency is the best way to nurture trust. In an age where people are losing trust on tech companies, Criptext looks to build trust and confidence by being fully transparent.
As you can see, Criptext is nothing like Gmail and that’s something we’re actually proud of. Most secure email solutions out there are basically Gmail with encryption, and don’t get us wrong, that’s better than Gmail, but they don’t go far enough to give control to end users. Ultimately, control is what users seek. When you know that only you own your data and your encryption keys, you end up feeling in control. That feeling of control breeds confidence and peace of mind. Since we launched in beta in August we’ve sent 21 new updates to the PlayStore and the product is improving on a daily basis. In time we’ll be as robust as the popular email apps. Unntil then, we remain happy with the fact that Criptext is everything that Gmail isn’t.
P.S. we highly recommend you watch the full interview of Tim Cook by Vice on privacy.
