Global email pioneers join forces to protect internet privacy and counter big tech’s grip on personal data
Press release- Thunderbird will feature Mailfence’s encrypted email service in their account setup. It allows users to rapidly create and manage an email account with state-of-the-art encryption and respect for privacy.
The collaboration between the two organizations will deepen the integration of their respective services to improve user experience. Later this year, users with a Mailfence account in their Thunderbird will benefit from automatic sync with all of the Mailfence tools: email, calendar, and contacts. They get a highly secured email solution with full respect for their privacy. “We are truly excited to share Mailfence’s privacy-focused offering with Thunderbird users,” said Ryan Sipes, Community, and Business Development Manager. “Mailfence is a highly respected pioneer in privacy-focused email, calendar, documents, and contacts. They started building their secure email expertise via open standards long before most other providers even existed. From the start, their mission was to protect the right to privacy for Internet users and society, instead of monetizing user data. So it just made a lot of sense for us to partner with them.”
“Thunderbird’s mission and values completely align with ours. We live in times of ever-growing Internet domination by big tech companies. These have repeatedly shown a total disrespect of online privacy and oblige their users to sign away their privacy through unreadable Terms of Service. We believe this is wrong and dangerous.” says Patrick De Schutter, Co-founder of Mailfence. “Privacy is a fundamental human right. With this partnership, we create a user-friendly privacy-respecting alternative to the Big Tech offerings that are centered around the commodification of personal data.”
Privacy is a fundamental human right
Why do more and more people care about their privacy?
Big tech has based its business model on the harvesting and exploitation of data. Although Increased data collection and personalization may have certain advantages for individuals, the scale at which very few actors concentrate and control our data presents a real danger to human liberty, autonomy, and well-being. Trading personal data must be stopped. It is harming individuals by making them vulnerable to identity theft, discrimination, and manipulation, but it is also poisoning society by undermining equality and democracy. Users and citizens need to be in control of their own data. This is why more and more people are taking action and reclaiming their online privacy by migrating to a new kind of digital actor that does not base its business model on the exploitation of data. The time has come to reconsider how our digital economy works.
Mailfence: A Secure and Private Alternative to Big Tech
Mailfence is a secure and private mail service, that provides end-to-end encrypted email with digital signing. Mailfence’s easy-to-use encryption bases itself on open-source cryptographic fundamentals and is interoperable with other OpenPGP compatible encrypted email services. But Mailfence is more than email, it offers a fully-featured suite with calendar, contacts, and documents storage. The availability of these features allows people who are using Big Tech solutions to migrate while still retaining the functionality they are accustomed to. Mailfence is operated by ContactOffice, one of the SaaS pioneers in Europe.
With this partnership we create a privacy-respecting alternative to the Big Tech
Thunderbird’s new strategy
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, available in 56 languages and used by around 20 million users around the world. Thunderbird email client was developed by the Mozilla Foundation which is also behind the Firefox web browser. Since January 2020, Thunderbird has operated as a new wholly-owned subsidiary, MZLA Technologies Corporation, in order to explore offering new products and services. The partnership with Mailfence fits precisely into this new strategy.