Is Hushmail Still Safe?
Found on Slashdot on Saturday, 02 August 2008
For a long time, Hushmail was considered a very secure email provider until an affidavit (PDF) from a DEA agent in 2007 showed that they had handed over 12 CDs of possibly decrypted data to law enforcement. Now, Cryptome has posted that the Hushmail encryption program is no longer the same program for which Hushmail releases their source. Is Hushmail even safe to use anymore?
Well, if you entrust the encryption to a third party, you should expect nasty surprises. While it's true that Hushmail only handed over emails which they also had the keys for, it shows that encryption needs to be done as soon as possible. Don't trust some random company to do it for you; just trust yourself. That's also why you should always prefer open source encryption software; with closed source, you can't be sure that there are no backdoors, as unlikely as it may be.