About Mailvelope

An Envelope for Email

Letters sealed with wax like in this painting by Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts are quite rare today.

But the classic paper letter has now also been replaced by email. What very few people are aware of, however, is that the majority of today's emails are sent without the "protective envelope" that is still common with paper letters, and are therefore more like a modern postcard.

A remedy in the form of secure encryption has been available for many years, but is rarely used for email because of its complexity.

We asked ourselves the question: How can the users of webmail protect their communication adequately?

The answer is Mailvelope!

The Story

  • The development of Mailvelope starts in early 2012 by Thomas Oberndörfer. Since August 2012 a first version is available in the Chrome Web Store, the source code is published under AGPL3 license on GitHub.
  • Since September 2013 funding by the Open Technology Fund, first Security Audits.
  • Since August 2014 cooperation with 1und1, development of an API for direct integration of Mailvelope in mail clients.
  • October 2014: Mailvelope now also supports the Firefox browser.
  • January 2015: Foundation of Mailvelope GmbH for services and support around the browser extension Mailvelope.
  • March 2015: Deutsche Telekom and United Internet announce PGP encryption based on Mailvelope for De-Mail.
  • August 2015: 1und1 enables PGP encryption for GMX and WEB.DE using the Mailvelope browser extension. The Deutsche Telekom and United Internet extend De-Mail with end-to-end encryption based on Mailvelope.
  • October 2017: Migration of the Firefox add-on to the web extension environment.
  • November 2018: Version 3.0 offers a connection of the key management to GnuPG, encrypted web forms and access to the Web Key Directory.
  • July 2019: New logo and design for Mailvelope and the website.