August
New VPN - Beta launch!
We are excited to announce that we are rolling out our next generation anti-surveillance services by launching our new VPN (Virtual Private Network) service! We are replacing our old VPN service with this shiny new one, although we are keeping the legacy VPN service around for now.
Why are we replacing the VPN? It is not sufficiently secure and it is not user friendly, resulting in massive headaches for everyone involved. Encryption needs to be easy, not something that is easy to screw up. This new VPN is easy to use and has an enhanced level of security. This new VPN service is also part of the technology that we are adopting in order to be able to offer super secure and super easy encrypted email in the future.
Want to give it a try? There are three things you need to know:
- Currently the interface only works in English, with more languages coming soon.
- Right now it is only available for Linux and Android (Mac and Windows are coming).
- Get started at: https://help.riseup.net/vpn
- Your account is not linked to your existing Riseup account, so you will need to create a new one with a different username. Don’t worry, it’s easy and you can merge these accounts later.
New Webmail? New Webmail!
You may have noticed we upgraded to a new webmail interface (https://mail.riseup.net). Very exciting and shiny!
If you were a user of our older webmail systems, the first time you login to this new one we will try to import your address books and settings. While the import process isn’t perfect, we hope it helps make the transition smoother for you. Please be sure to check your new address book for errors, duplicates and missing entries. In particular, we know there are issues with some entries with accented or non-Latin characters. If you find things missing or wrong, the best thing to do is a manual import: https://help.riseup.net/en/email/webmail/address-book#manually-importing-your-contacts-from-impsqurrelmail-to-roundcube
We are still adding features and fixing bugs, and we hope to have a mobile-friendly version soon. If you have problems let us know. You can read more about checking Riseup via webmail and why we made the switch at:
Down Times and More Spam
Not only do we have a new VPN, and a new webmail, but we’ve also been working on making major changes to some of our core infrastructure in order to move to newer and better crypto and to expand capacity. This is great, but you may have noticed an increased number of times Risep is down, or seen more spam in your inbox. Please be patient as we make the changes that will eventually make everything more secure and less spammy.
DMARC problems fixed
In the May newsletter we reported that a new spam fighting technology, DMARC, was interfering with certain domains being able to mail Riseup mailing lists. Since then a fix for this problem was developed and we have installed it on our lists. Now Yahoo, AOL, and other domains with strict DMARC policies should no longer have problems emailing our lists.
Money
Wow, Riseup has been really busy (see above). Why are we able to make all these great changes and make Riseup way more secure? Because so many of you have donated money to Riseup. If you can donate to us, wonderful! If you can set up a recurring payment, even better. And if you are one of the thousands of people who have supported us over the last four***** years with donations small and large, thank you so, so much. And, really truly, if you can’t donate to Riseup but are working to make the world a better place, thank you for that. https://help.riseup.net/donate