Protecting a critical communication medium such as email should be a priority for every user, but the truth is that very few solutions offer this protection in a simplified way. Whiteout Mail aims to fill the gap with an email client capable of providing end-to-end encryption, based on the strengths of OpenPGP.
We all know very well the importance of different encryption technologies. Every ignorant politician who tried to ban them was ridiculed, and as soon as a serious bug is discovered in some protocol, all alarms are triggered. However, bugs and politics are not the only problems encryption faces. Why don't people use it more? The first barrier is communication. The average computer user doesn't know what it is, and therefore doesn't know its benefits. Those who decide to learn will quickly discover the second barrier, which is technical. Without wanting to offend anyone, the implementation of resources like PGP and other variants are anti-user. Installing software, generating public and private keys, sharing and verifying public keys, copy, paste, back and forth... the process is horrible. Journalists from multiple media outlets have been unable to receive data from whistleblowers because they were unable to properly secure their email accounts. The answer is simple: We need something (much) simpler.
In the past we have come across alternatives like ProtonMail and Tutanota, but both require the creation of a new email account. In contrast, Whiteout Mail can apply encryption to our existing email account, as long as it supports IMAP, which is very common these days. Whiteout Mail is available as a web edition and has dedicated apps for iOS, Android, and Chrome. Key management and end-to-end encryption use the OpenPGP protocol, so anyone interested can study the main components of Whiteout Mail and verify that there is nothing strange "under the hood".
While we haven't experienced any issues during our tests, the feedback posted by some users doesn't seem to agree with that. Several comments in the Android and Chrome stores were quite harsh, but they lose sight of the fact that Whiteout Mail is still in development, so an extra dose of patience is necessary. Anything that removes the pain of implementing PGP from the equation is welcome. Maybe Whiteout Mail isn't the ideal solution for certain users, but it's a step in the right direction.
