Lavabit vs Tutanota

Lavabit and Tutanota are two email services that have taken up the noble and slightly paranoid quest of keeping your correspondence as private as a Vogon poet’s inner musings. Lavabit, the elder statesman of encrypted emails, is renowned for its steely determination to ensure that only the sender and recipient have the faintest clue about what’s being written. It employs end-to-end encryption so thorough that even Lavabit itself stands politely in the corner, not peeking. Back in 2013, Lavabit made a dramatic exit stage left, shutting down to avoid government interference, which, in the grand scheme of email service dramas, is about as principled and mysterious as it gets.

Tutanota, meanwhile, strides onto the scene as the enthusiastic open-source upstart, wielding not only end-to-end encryption for emails but also wrapping up metadata, contacts and calendars in a similarly uncrackable cocoon. With automatic encryption that works behind the scenes like an overzealous yet highly competent butler, Tutanota ensures that your digital secrets are kept just that—secret. It adds extras like secure password recovery and phishing protection, as though daring the universe to find a vulnerability in its fortress. Together, Lavabit and Tutanota are like two quirky, privacy-obsessed characters in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Email Galaxy, each with their own unique way of thwarting snoopers and safeguarding your digital dignity.

See also: Top 10 Email services