Our mission: Secure and free communication without surveillance

We have been around since the early days of the Internet and played an active part in shaping and developing technologies that facilitate free communication: This is a topic that has been at our core for decades and constitutes a major motivation for what we do. We actively participate in the public debate, but we are also getting increasingly worried about corporate interests undermining the basic principles of free and unconstrained communication - for them, the Internet as just another device for making money.

We know that checks and balances are important in a democratic society that relies on the rule of law. People sometimes forget that the authorities of the state do not just represent the law but are also obliged to follow it, including basic laws and human rights laws. We do our part in defending our users' rights by only responding to those information requests that are lawful and rejecting all others. In our view, any measures that facilitate data retention are contrary to everyone's right of privacy, informational self-determination, and free speech. Even though as an e-mail provider, we are less affected than other ISPs, we recognise the significance of data retention and the wider damage it could do. We have therefore decided to take a leading part in the current constitutional complaint against data retention together with Digitalcourage and other organisations, journalists, laywers, and many others.