Pattrick de Schutter is a typical serial entrepreneur.
In this interview, he tells us his thoughts on international law, personal privacy and everything in between.
We therefore started the Mailfence project approximately three years ago.
We are only a small part of a big movement which is currently taking its first steps.
In order for a movement to succeed, you need alliances.
We intend to support several foundations that will fight along with us for Digital rights and respect for privacy.
Except for having shared goals, we do not have any direct connection with them.
vpnMentor:Do you have any personal experience regarding privacy violation?
Would you mind sharing it with our readers?
Yes, most probably all the time.
vpnMentor:Mailfence is committed to protect their customers from eavesdropping.
What makes an email account vulnerable to eavesdropping?
There are various aspects to this issue.
For now I will focus on the gear aspect, and email account aspect.
vpnMentor:Who typically does the eavesdropping and for what purposes?
It can be done by a great deal of adversaries for various purposes.
Lastly, but equally significant, there exist hackers and assailants who conduct such activities for their individual benefit.
vpnMentor:What solutions are available today?
Though weve seen Gpg4win/GPGtools, they still didnt break the deal.
vpnMentor:Can you explain the difference between privacy violation and legitimate business intelligence gathering?
This is rather a legal question and I am not a lawyer.
In addition it also depends on the country one operates in.
Privacy is a fundamental human right.
It underpins human dignity and other key values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech.
Nearly every country in the world recognises the right of privacy in their constitution.
At the least, it is a right of inviolability of the home and secrecy of communications.
More info on this can be foundhere.
vpnMentor:On your website you specifically mention that you are not American and that you follow Belgian legislation.
What is the advantage in that?
Such requests must be accompanied by a Belgian court order.
What precautions do you take to keep your server private?
We also use Debian as our operating system, because they take their security responsibilities and updates very seriously.
In most cases, an update for a security issue will be available within hours of the original report.
Finally, we follow kernel-level firewalling and only allow necessary communications.
How vulnerable are they to privacy violation?
vpnMentor:We’ve all seen how email identity forgery can trick even the smartest of email users.
For this particular purpose, Mailfence supplies its users with a digital signature.
Can you explain how a digital signature can help in preventing email identity theft?
Digital signatures use crypto-based incentives to protect your identity.
vpnMentor:How can Mailfence help in filtering out malicious emails which are supposedly sent by friends?
vpnMentor:What measures would you recommend for someone who’s identity has been forged?
Our How-To manual provides detailed instructions for such cases as well.
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