PassLok is once again getting some attention in the news, so I thought it would be a good idea to collect some of the things that have been said in a post. Some of the titles from major tech outlets: “PassLok Simplifies Email Encryption so Anyone Can Use It” (lifehacker.com), “PassLock (sic): Easy Email Encryption for Everyone” (makeuseof.com).
May 20, 2016. lifehacker.com Editor-in-Chief Alan Henry likes PassLok enough to entitle his article “PassLok Simplifies Email Encryption so Anyone Can Use It.” If you google some of the words you will find a lot of other articles that derive from it.
January 14, 2017. Mihir Patkar names PassLok as one of the essential “5 Privacy Protecting Apps You Need to Use Right Now” in his article at makeuseof.com. He does call it “PassLock” with an extra c, and says it is a client for PGP (it is not), but we forgive him for the slight inaccuracies because he nails PassLok’s ease of use. Again, a little googling will lead you to other articles obviously inspired from it, like this one, and this other one in Spanish.
The great strength of PassLok is that everything is client-side, so if the user has a koscher version on his/her computer, the computer is not compromised or hacked and PasLok is used properly, no power on earth can decrypt the message. The unfortunate weakness is that it not easy to use, especially for the newbie.
I agree. I think a new version of PassLok should be released, a super-duper-uber simplified version.
This version exists. It is called “PassLok for Email” and you can get it as a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. It contains most of PassLok’s functionality, except for signatures and anonymous encryption, and is much easier to use. No need to maintain a directory of Locks.
And now there’s also PassLok Universal, which adds encryption to any page with an input, not just certain email services. You can find it in the Chrome and Firefox web stores for extensions.