Lavabit, one of the secure email services which shuttered following Snowden revelations, is going to reopen its services briefly allowing users to download their emails.
Through a brief message, Lavabit founder Ladar Levison, revealed that users will be able to change their passwords for the first 72-hours starting Monday 7.00 PM US Central time. The reason behind providing the password change window was in the wake of recent reports which led many Lavabit account holders to believe that their emails have been compromised.
“If users are indeed concerned that their account information has been compromised, this will allow them to change their account password on a website with a newly secured SSL key”, noted Levison in the message.
After this 72-hour period i.e. starting Thursday Lavabit will allow users to access their accounts and their personal data so that they can preserve it the way they want to.
Lavabit was closed down in August after Levison refused to hand over the service’s encryption keys to law enforcement agencies, which could have allowed law enforcement agencies to theoretically access emails of all users. Levison was fined $10,000 for his stand and now he intends to challenge the government surveillance orders in US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for which he is currently raising money.
