Lavabit Comes Online Briefly So Users Can Download Emails And Change Passwords

Email provider Lavabit shut down back in August after refusing to comply with U.S government requests that would essentially mean handing over customer data to the NSA. Lavabit’s owner has been bound by a public gag order but has still been able to explain the basic gist of the Lavabit situation. The latest development in the Lavabit saga is that the service has come back online for a little while to allow users to change their passwords and download their archived emails.

The first stage came online yesterday at 7PM Central Time/8PM Eastern Time/Midnight GMT and that stage allows users to go online and change their passwords. Then from October 17th users will be able to get onto their accounts and download an archive of their stored messages and personal account data. The password change is required in response to the fact that the company’s SSL certificates have been compromised by the NSA’s investigation. All previous passwords have been reset and should be secure with a new key as a result, so no accounts have been compromised. Users of Lavabit should be able to change their password and download their archived emails from Liberty.Lavabit.com.

Those who want to support Lavabit’s cause can do so at Rally.org where its own Ladar Levison has set up a legal funding program to help small-time Lavabit take on the surveillance giant the NSA in court. So far it has managed to crank up about $93,000.

Image courtesy of Lavabit