Own-Mailbox, the first 100% confidential mailbox

As the only other HNer with more than single-digit karma, I will try to give an objective overview of the project as I see it (this is taken from their FAQ):

-the device is €49 during the KS campaign, even though their FAQ says €59. It will be €79 afterwards.

-the HW has USB, HDMI (or is it eSATA?), and ethernet ports (one each), and 16GB of storage. It is based on the Allwinner A13 which as 256MB of memory.

- it appears they are using kernel version 4.03, though refer to it as Linux Libre (a phrase which I'm not familiar with, but full source code is available)

- DNS will be handled giving everyone a subdomain on omb.one or one can use their own domain; SSL will be handled using self-generated certs and Letsencrypt

- security is handled using GPG with keys being stored on device or transferred via USB. There is also something they call Private Link Message (PLM) which is used to communicate with people not using GPG, and appears to send a one-time-access [SSL] link (either on omb.one or your domain) that expires after it is accessed or at a specified date; the recipient has the ability to respond via a web interface. One can also activate a private HTTPS interface for one-way comms to your specified own-mail account

- there is some mechanism for P2P backup that requires 70% uptime on the user's part (remember, msgs are encrypted), but the mechanism for this functionality is not clear

Overall, I agree with their motivation, and think they have thought out much of their approaches, but it seems they are slightly confused in their target market (it is a mix of non-technical and quite technical). I also am not smart enough to adequately determine the soundness, but it seems quite sound. I would be interested to read what more technical folks on HN think.

Edit: I would also like to see how this hardware could be used for communication other than email, like a web-based IRC alternative (or IM). Gitlab has integrated an interesting project that maybe suitable for this piece of hardware: https://github.com/mattermost/platform.

Edit2: I would also like to see this project look at using mailpile rather than roundcube: https://github.com/mailpile/Mailpile.

This is exactly the kind of project we need these times. I hope this works out OK for these guys (I am backer #7). I hope it works out for us backers. Also I hope someone will later make a RaspberryPi image with almost the same functionality, ready to download and use (but, alas, you have to provide your own mail domain). Still, this is the right thinking. Email is the one protocol we easily can have at home, reasonably secure, with all the benefits and almost no negatives. My peers do not even need to know where the mails go!

Not sure why these people are spending so much money to develop their own hardware (40% of total cost) when this software (mail server, PGP) can be run on many cheap, off-the-shelf systems, like Raspberry Pi.

“If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked.

— Richard Clarke

I love this project. I already bought mine.

I just Backed it! Hope it will be good!

AY YO kickstarter wont let me login.

That's good!

Good project

go go go

I am impatient to see the result of this campaign!

Love this project!