Lavabit to reopen for 5 days to let users download lost emails

[infurnus]

I know we have a few Lavabit users on the forums, just thought I'd share this news.[/size]
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2054429/ ... mails.html
[quote=PCWorld]
Secure email provider Lavabit is coming back from the dead for a brief time to give users a chance to recover their data, after abruptly shutting its doors in August to protest what the company considered intrusive data requests from the U.S. government.

Lavabit’s data recovery is slated to begin on Friday, October 18.

Before Lavabit data becomes publicly available again, users will have 72 hours to change their passwords at the rebelliously named https://liberty.lavabit.com. Lavabit says it is offering a brief password reset window to ease concerns that user login data may have been compromised.

"If users are indeed concerned that their account information has been compromised, this will allow them to change their account password on a website with a newly secured SSL key," Lavabit said in a statement.

---

The new SSL key for the data retrieval period is of particularly crucial note. In early August, a court compelled Lavabit founder Ladar Levison to hand over the company’s SSL keys, according to a recent report in The New Yorker. Levison originally resisted this request, believing that handing over Lavabit’s SSL keys would open up a “profound exploitation of his service’s communications,” the report said. Soon after surrendering the SSL keys Levison shut down Lavabit.

SSL is the standard encryption method that secures communications between a Website and personal devices such as PCs, smartphones, and tablets. Presumably, Lavabit's new SSL encryption is not in the hands of the government—at least not yet.
[cont.]
[/size][/quote]

[Mr.Man]

Scroll down to the bottom, this guy sais its a keylogger. Now i'm not saying its true, but...

EDIT: of course this could be a total troll, i just noticed it.

[Ijon Tichy]

because levison would take the site and business that he shut down specifically so the FBI wouldn't get the private data of its customers... and then go completely against all of that and stick a packet sniffer on it and violate the ideals he's upheld in the face of one of the strongest governments on earth

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

[infurnus]

The "download email" function isn't available yet, but if anyone is paranoid all they would have to do is use VPN/Tor/etc encryption if their connection is being spied on, to lessen the chance of a man-in-the-middle attack.

It would also be a good idea to not use the same password on other services, but I'm sure most Lavabit users are already somewhat tech-savvy.

The "honeypot" scare (I've read up on the "debunking" of liberty.lavabit.com) seems to be ill-informed and promoted by people just looking to stir up FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) to smear the reputation of Lavabit.