BERLIN - Last summer, German secure email provider Posteo faced a do-or-die moment: give in to police threats to seize its servers or fight back in court. Investigators in the state of Bavaria had contacted the Berlin-based startup because they wanted the identity of a Posteo account holder who was thought to be using the service for illicit purposes.
But Patrik and Sabrina Löhr, the husband-and-wife team who run the swiftly growing email provider, told police time and again that they simply couldn't comply: Posteo is an anonymous email provider; it doesn't store any data on its customers' identities.
