Should you wish to send us a message, we have the following methods you can use to reach out via encrypted methods.
Please note that the below section is dedicated to reaching out Alepouna (the author and maintainer of this blog - about us)
If you are using Tuta E-Mail you can send an e-mail to contact at alepouna.net.
When using their e-mail client and adding this address as the recipient, you should see this message below the subject line:
If you see this line, you are good to go.
Your e-mail will arrive at me encrypted and you don't have to do anything else 😄
If you do not use Tuta, or you wish to add an additional layer of encryption, we also support receiving GPG e-mails.
When sending GPG encrypted e-mails please ensure you do two things:
- NEVER put the subject on the subject. If you wish for complete anonymity, you must not the subject of the e-mail on the title. Should you wish to include a subject, just insert it as a line on your email content.
- Have the subject prefixed as
[ENCRYPTED]- This will just help my e-mail client organize the email, lol.
Where is my key?
You may now wonder, where is my key? I rotate my key quite a fair bit, especially depending on the purpose of the e-mail address (e.g. for personal stuff I use a different key, etc.)
I do not wish to post my key here on this site, as it might be rotated out and have your e-mail be unreadable. For this reason, you can look me up on the OpenGPG key registry.
I use my Macbook to read encrypted e-mail as its on the utmost security settings, and also store and handle my keys there.
You can look up my keys on the key registry by clicking here.
For secure blog contact, please use contact and the domain of this website (alepouna.net...)
For whistle-blowing or other confidential journalistic sources and information, please use whistle and the domain of this website.
For a more real time experience and day to day messages I use Signal & iMessages.
Please reach out via e-mail first. iMessages access will not be provided!
Secure & encrypted communication is as safe as the device and network it was sent with. If your device is compromised (e.g. due to a virus, spyware or trojan) any communication performed by the device (such as e-mails you send to me! or others!) will be visible to the malicious actor!
It's important to ensure your device is CLEAN. There are many live Linux ISOs out there that let you boot from a USB stick and thus ensure your device is "clean" from any SOFTWARE threats. I use such a tool to do emergency secure communication on public devices or devices of friends.
Your network is also important, using a VPN and the Tor Network will increase the chances of your e-mail and the action of sending it being completely unknown to any prying eyes.
I use Tuta to handle my e-mails, and I trust the open source implementation and all the security practices they take to secure transport e-mail from your provider to my device. I also take good care of my devices, and do not use the Tuta e-mail client on for example my desktop, and instead rely on the web version (which I have to unlock every time). This ensures that ONLY ME can access my e-mails and especially the encrypted portion.
Additionally, when it comes to extremely sensitive communications, I may sometimes spin up an IRC (or similar) server and communicate with GPG keys over there.
Sending e-mails and communicating with others securely and privately should be mainstream and the fact that there are social & e-mail platforms out there that send data in straight up plain text is extremely hilarious and very concerning!
On that note, sending stuff over unsecure channels isn't always bad and it should itch your brain at night, as long as its not important or private data that must remain as such. For example, sending memes or asking a mate to come over at your place over Discord, is totally fine. But sending private documents about your company financial records, or the codes for the nuclear football, would be very irresponsible.
Don't make security & privacy a taboo, but don't make the opinions on not using it annoying either!