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Posteo is the winner of Deutsche Bahn’s “Climate Mobility Challenge 2023”: At the award presentation in Berlin on 29 June, we were recognised for our sustainable mobility program.
Since 2022, Deutsche Bahn has aimed to incentivise companies with their competition to reduce CO2 emissions through environmentally-friendly mobility practices.

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After the jury nominated us for the award in the “small company (up to 50 employees)” category, the final decision was made by the audience on Thursday evening during Deutsche Bahn’s “Mobility Symposium”. Afterwards, Posteo founder, Patrik Löhr and Dean Ceulic, accepted the award from Deutsche Bahn executive board member, Stefanie Berk.
We are pleased about the award!

An overview of our award-winning mobility program

Our team consists of 40 employees spread out all over Germany. Our mobility program is a part of the entire company’s sustainability strategy – over the years we have continued to expand upon it.

No Flights Policy: For climate protection reasons, we have refrained entirely from aeroplane travel already since our founding in 2009. In our experience, we have found that many destinations in continental Europe are also very accessible by train with regard to business trips.

Facilitating environmentally-friendly trips: Since 2014, we grant our employees 2 additional vacation days per year if they refrain from using aeroplanes when travelling abroad privately – and we also contribute towards travel costs (150 €, net) for the train ticket. Our intention with this voluntary offer is to create an incentive for environmentally-friendly trips by train and to compensate with additional vacation days for the longer journey. Since many years, this offer has been adopted and valued by our team.

Remote Positions: Most team members can work fully remotely as their positions allow for this. This reduces commuting and CO2 mobility-related emissions. We have decided to continue to offer remote work on an ongoing basis, even after the pandemic.

Free public transportation ticket: We provide all employees with a public transportation ticket free of charge. In fact, this also applies for those who work exclusively remotely or do not live in Berlin, where our company is located.

Accessible location: our offices are located centrally in Berlin and are easy to reach using public transportation, by bike or by foot.

Bike repair: we cover maintenance and repair costs, including replacement parts, for bikes that are also used for travelling to work. Our team gladly takes advantage of this offer. Additionally, we have rented car parking spots in the underground garage located beneath our office to set up secure bike parking.

Idea pool for companies

The “Climate Mobility Challenge” (German link) is a competition from Deutsche Bahn for companies and organisations to make sustainable employee and event mobility visible:
Company mobility policies are presented from a wide range of industries and company sizes on the competition website. As a result, it also serves as an idea pool for companies that are searching for sustainable mobility solutions.

In total, 54 companies participated in the competition this year. There were three categories: small, medium and large companies. Additionally, there was a special award in the “event mobility” category. In total, there have already been 120 mobility policies presented on Deutsche Bahn’s idea platform

“Employers are multipliers, bear responsiblity and can do a lot to avoid emissions through company policies. At Posteo, we also try to incentivise more climate protection in everyday life with free additional benefits for our team. Participating in the competition motivated us to expand upon this”, said Posteo founder, Patrik Löhr, during the award presentation.

Making coding exciting for girls: This is what our team set out to do for this year’s Girls’Day.
It was a special experience for us to welcome female students interested in computer science at the Posteo Lab located on top of Berlin’s Kreuzberg – and to give them insight into the job of a software developer.

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Starting steps for computer science

After a round of getting to know each other, our developer Monika shared how she trained for her profession. She told the girls what subject matter should be expected when studying computer science and what job possibilities exist afterwards. She then answered questions regarding choosing a profession and everyday life on the job.

Workshop: How email protocols works

Afterwards, there was a more detailed look into working as a developer. Our team explained to the students what protocols are, what role they have in the global exchange of information – and how the SMTP protocol (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is used for transferring emails.

Finally, it was the girls’ turn: With help from Anne, a team leader from our technical support, they could communicate with an email server using SMTP protocol, enter commands and deliver emails from the command line.

Choosing a field of study or profession without gender stereotypes

Our Girls’Day Team enjoyed the day very much. “We want to give girls the chance to meet women who work in software development and by doing so contribute to changing old role models. The profession is multifaceted, attractive and it should be normal for girls to pursue it if they are interested,” says Posteo developer, Monika. “It was so nice to see how motivated the girls were to participate. We will definitely take part again next year.”

Girls’Day is a day of action for career guidance in Germany. On this day, girls in the 5th grade and higher can gain more insight into jobs that are primarily chosen by men.
This includes software development. Posteo’s development team has a balanced ratio between men and women. Many of our features were programmed by women: for example the Posteo migration service, our mobile user interface, the attachment browser with photo stream – and also our new dark mode. But it’s not like that everywhere: In computer science studies and in the technology sector, women in Germany are still strongly under-represented.

Dear Posteo customers,

have you made any resolutions for the new year? We have a useful tip that only takes a few minutes. Activate or update the “forgotten password” feature for your Posteo account!

If you ever forget your Posteo password, you can use this feature to conveniently receive a new password via email or SMS.

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Activate the “forgotten password” feature

It’s very easy to activate. You can find this feature in the settings via “Password and security”. Once there, enter the mobile phone number or alternative email address you want us to send the new password to in case you lose it.

You have already activated this feature? Then make sure that your specified contact is still up-to-date. Simply enter your current mobile phone number or alternative email address, and you’re guaranteed to be up-to-date again.

You can find step-by-step instructions for activating and using the “forgotten password” feature in our help section: https://posteo.de/en/help/forgotten-password-feature

Access security for your email account

Our email address is the core of our digital identity: We log in to most online services with it and receive new passwords to our email address whenever we need them.

If, however, we forget the password for our own email address, we don’t have this option. That’s why it’s so important to activate the “forgotten password” feature and provide an alternative email address or mobile phone number for resetting the password.
In case you lose your password, you can then go to “Forgotten password?” to reset your password.

The feature is designed to be privacy-friendly, secure, and will give you immediate access to your account again if you need it.

Note: If you have activated your Posteo crypto mail storage, the reset does not work automatically because your emails are encrypted with the forgotten password. However, the feature authenticates you as an account user: our support will then be able to quickly help you regain access to your address in case of a lost password. Previously stored emails remain encrypted with the forgotten password. If crypto mail storage is activated, it is therefore especially important to remember your password.

Best regards
The Posteo Team

Dear Posteo customers and interested parties,

We have a transparency notice for you: we have updated our donations page. On this page, we document the organisations that we financially supported during the previous year (2021).

Over the past year, we donated a total of 59,500 EUR. Of this, 56,139.93 EUR constituted voluntary donations by Posteo. The remaining 3,361.07 EUR came from users that donated remaining credit when terminating their account.

In March 2022, we additionally donated 10,000 EUR for emergency humanitarian aid in Ukraine (Médecins Sans Frontières/UN Refugee Agency). These donations will only be listed in our transparency notes next year when we disclose the figures for 2022.

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It is important to us that we encourage social engagement and take responsibility as a company.
We therefore donate to carefully selected organisations in the fields of environmental and climate protection, digital freedom and freedom of expression, as well as refugee and humanitarian emergency aid.

Posteo donated to the following organisations in 2021:

UNHCR (UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe):
UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe is the German offshoot of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It ensures the survival of refugees in acute crisis situations with life-saving emergency measures. UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe thus provides for sufficient supplies of water, food and medicines in refugee camps or regions that are hard to access, for example.

Doctors Without Borders:
Doctors Without Borders was founded in France in 1971. The German section was added in 1993. Today, MSF (Médicins Sans Frontières) is an international network that provides emergency medical aid in over 70 countries. As a humanitarian medical organisation, Doctors Without Borders is committed to providing high-quality and efficient health care in countries where people’s survival is at risk due to diseases, wars and disasters.

Reporters Without Borders:
Reporters Without Borders engages itself worldwide for freedom of the press and freedom of information. The organisation documents violations against freedom of the press and supports journalists that are in danger. Reporters Without Borders combats censorship and restrictive media laws.

UNICEF – Living Schools:
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has been advocating for the health, education and rights of children and mothers in 190 countries since 1946. UNICEF is politically involved against the use of child soldiers and for protecting refugees and for implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Posteo supports the project Living Schools in Malawi. Schools are being built there that are based on principles of ecological awareness, e-learning and participation in decision-making. The schools have their own water supply system for clean drinking water and sanitation, use solar energy and teach about environmental protection in their school gardens.

Netzpolitik.org:
netzpolitik.org is a journalistic platform for digital freedom rights and presents the important debates and developments about the internet. The platform documents how politics is changing the internet and society through regulation and the continued expansion of surveillance laws. With its work, netzpolitik.org wants to encourage people to become engaged for their digital freedom rights and an open society.

BUND:
Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) is one of the largest German environmental organisations. Throughout Germany there are more than 2,000 voluntary BUND groups engaged with regional environmental topics. BUND is also engaged with climate protection, ecological agriculture and protection of threatened species, forests and water. BUND is the German member of the international environmental network, “Friends of the Earth”.

ECCHR:
The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) is engaged with legal measures for human rights. The ECCHR lawyers’ aim is to hold state and non-state actors legally accountable for grave human rights abuses. Among others, the ECCHR was founded in 2007 by human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck, who represents whistleblower Edward Snowden in Germany.

Posteo does business sustainably and is independent. Our service is financed entirely by our customers’ account fees. There are no investors or advertising partners at Posteo. You are what makes our involvement in these projects possible. We thank you very much for helping to make a difference.

Best regards,
The Posteo team

Dear Posteo customers and interested parties,

Today we address all users of the encryption add-on Enigmail in Thunderbird. If you regularly encrypt your emails with OpenPGP and depend on this feature, please avoid updating to the forthcoming Thunderbird release (version 78.0). Enigmail will no longer be supported in Thunderbird 78. The program’s new and own implementation of OpenPGP encryption is still in an experimental phase and is deactivated by default.

Should you use automatic updates, no further action is required. An installation of the Thunderbird 78 update will not occur automatically.

Background information:
This summer, Mozilla is planning on releasing a new version of Thunderbird (78.0) that will change how add-ons are supported. Among other reasons, this became necessary due to security issues.
This was also made clear from a security audit commissioned by Posteo at the end of 2017. Various security issues in Thunderbird were identified, particularly with its add-on interface.

Third-party add-ons like Enigmail, that need to access internal components of Thunderbird, will no longer be supported.

Because of this, Mozilla is implementing their own OpenPGP feature in Thunderbird 78. This built-in encryption is planned to replace the Enigmail add-on..
Currently OpenPGP support in Thunderbird 78 is categorised as experimental and is disabled by default: Enigmail is no longer supported in Thunderbird 78.

Waiting for Thunderbird 78.2

From Thunderbird 78.2 onwards, OpenPGP is planned to be made available by default in Thunderbird. We will inform you as soon as this version is made available and an update for OpenPGP users is possible.

Best regards
The Posteo Team