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Who is Lavaboom and what is this campaign about?

Lavaboom is a small team of developers and designers in Cologne, Germany. 

We’ve spent the better part of last year working on an email service that protects its users' privacy instead of abusing it.  Encryption and zero knowledge are baked in, and you don't have to worry about any technical details if you don't want to.

We've been under closed beta for the past 12 months and as we're preparing a stable release, we want to give you a chance to get early access at a great price.

The problem we want to solve: Your emails are like open postcards

Email is still the number one communication tool online - 2.3 million people are sending 150 billion emails every day. 

In 2013 Edward Snowden revealed the scope of the mass surveillance of the NSA and their partners in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 90% of the data that NSA collects comes from coercive partnerships with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and other US-based email services. American companies are forced by the US law to grant access to their servers and data - databases of users, their private communication and metadata- without having a way to oppose it! If you are a client of one of the biggest email providers, your privacy is compromised. The NSA can read your emails and investigate your online activity whenever they want.

Your email is like an open postcard. And you would’t put your bank details or other sensitive, private information on a postcard, right? 

How can we prevent our emails from being read by third parties? By encrypting them.

Email encryption used properly would prevent surveillance and take back your privacy. The main encryption technology used for email, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), is mathematically and empirically proven to be unbreakable. It has been used by security professionals, hacktivists, journalists and governments for over 20 years. In fact, American three-letter agencies are probably using it to protect their secret communication.

You may wonder then, why isn't PGP email as common as say, HTTPS websites?

The answer is: because encryption is still very difficult to use. So difficult in fact, that if you aren’t a security professional or a very devoted individual, you would either not put up with the complexity/inconvenience or have a high risk of using it incorrectly (thus getting zero privacy gains coupled with increased exposure caused by using encryption).

Do you know how to handle key generation, key exchange, public and private keys, signing, generating subkeys? Do you know how to control the amount of metadata sent with your emails? Have you ever used your terminal or a PGP/GPG client? Do you even know what a terminal is and where to find it? See, it’s complicated :-) 

This is the main reason why, even though everyone is aware of the ongoing mass surveillance, only 0.1% of all emails are really private. The rest of us are still sending unencrypted emails, just because encryption is either unfeasible (most notably on smartphones) or too hard for casual use. 

Solution: Lavaboom - email encryption made easy

We at Lavaboom set out to fix this. We want to make sending encrypted emails as easy as dealing with simple, unencrypted emails. If you don't want to, you don't even need to learn anything about encryption. With Lavaboom you send email like you always did - our application takes care of encryption to make your communication secure and private.

1. Easy to use, modern interface

We spent a lot of time on creating a gorgeous and functional interface that works just like what you're used to. The technical knobs and dials are neatly out of sight, but they're still here, waiting for the tech-savvy users who want to feel in control.

2. End-to-end encryption

Lavaboom is basically putting your open postcard into a secure envelope that only you and the recipients can open. Key generation, discovery and exchange are all happening in the background - you can simply focus on writing emails. Based on PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) it's the same the NSA uses internally.

And hit send, that's it!

3. Zero-knowledge policy

Not only is the content of your emails private, your personal data is private too. Our policy is to collect as little data about our users as possible. If you don’t want to tell us your real name, that’s fine with us. Even if you'd like to buy a premium account, you can avoid sharing your personal details with us by paying anonymously via Bitcoin or cash.

4. Fully open-source codebase

When a company is claiming to be very secure, usually our first reaction is to doubt it. We believe that many of you do the same, so we have published all of our source code on GitHub. If you want, you can easily validate our claims.

5. Protected by German privacy law

The German privacy-protecting laws are among the strictest in the world. Lavaboom is a German company and all our servers are in Germany, which means that we do not have to comply with the subpoenas and warrants sent to us by the US government. Additionally, if the German government wanted shut us down one day, they would have to change their own privacy laws first.

What we need the money for?

In order to provide Lavaboom to the millions who deserve to be able to communicate securely, we need your help. This is how we are planning to spend the raised money:

What are the features of the Premium account?

1) Larger inbox size - a 15GB bonues added to the 2GB from the supporter package.

2) Custom domain support, so that you can use your @yourdomain.com with Lavaboom's email service.

3) Early access to our mobile apps and native desktop applications.

4) Access to experimental features in the client

5) As a Premium Supporter, you'll get a direct line and contact to our CEO, Felix.

About us

The Lavaboom HQ Team. From the left to right: Felix von Looz, Andrei Simionescu, Jonas Reisenauer, Felix Müller-Irion and Julia Zimmermann.

Felix Müller-Irion is an ex-hacker, cofounder and CEO of Lavaboom. He has worked for Bethesda, EA and was a part of the Chaos Computer Club during his teens. Felix has over ten years experience of testing security systems; he’s the reason Lavaboom came to be. 

Andrei Simionescu is the CTO at Lavaboom. Prior to joining Lavaboom, Andrei studied Computer Science in the UK, worked in open source (Google Summer of Code), research, and the industry. Andrei is the reason Lavaboom is so secure. 

Felix von Looz is our Head of Design. His experience in the design world spans over almost a decade and gives him a unique focus on usability which is reflected in Lavaboom’s interface. He’s the reason Lavaboom doesn’t feel like a security product. And yes, we try to hire at least 2 employees for every name.

Julia Zimmermann is our operations officer. She's the glue for the team, the one person who makes come together. She is a studied tradeswoman and service designer and has worked in the past in a renowned design agency. She's Lavaboom's mind and conscience. 

Jonas Reisenauer is our Office Assistant. Without him we would disappear in empty Club Mate bottles, starve and try to work without WiFi. He also diligently conducts user tests to help improve Lavaboom.

As a team we're absolutely dedicated to protecting privacy as a basic human right and we use Lavaboom on a daily basis.

Please support us!

Every single dollar gets us closer to the goal of bringing secure email to everyone.

Thank you!