Secure Email Options for 2023: Lavabit – The Secure Email Program Owned by Ladar Levison who Defied the FBI Order to Turn Over Snowden’s Emails

If you are using one of the Big Tech's free email programs, such as Google's Gmail, or Microsoft's Yahoo or Hotmail, you are exposing your private communication to prying eyes, including the U.S. Government. As I have written previously, hosting your own domain name and having your own private email is a much better option. There are also companies that advertise private, secure email services. One option is Lavabit, which is the secure email service that Edward Snowden was using when he left the NSA.  Ladar Levison, the owner of Lavabit, received an order from the FBI to turn over its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) private keys, which would have allowed the FBI to not only access Snowden's emails, but also all the other emails of Lavabit's clients, about 400,000 at the time.  Not only would the FBI have been able to retrieve Lavabit's customers' emails, they could have intercepted their emails retrieving things like passwords, credit card information, and pretty much anything they wanted. Ladar decided to protect his clients, by shutting down his business and removing all his clients' accounts, effectively putting himself out of business after building one of the most successful private email services for over 10 years. Then he "turned over the keys" to the FBI.  In 2017 Lavabit started operating again, using the new Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME), which is an end-to-end email encryption platform.  At this point, I would have to say this may be the best option for secure email from a 3rd party provider, because of its encryption, which allegedly does not even allow anybody working at Lavabit to access clients' emails, and hence they would have nothing to turn over to the Government authorities who may try to access any of their clients' emails.