Soon to be over: Volksverschlüsselung will be discontinued

With just a few clicks, anyone should be able to easily send end-to-end encrypted emails—the idea behind Volksverschlüsselung was to make encryption accessible to a wide audience. Now, after years of operation, the free Volksverschlüsselung software will be discontinued on January 31, 2026. This was announced by the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (Fraunhofer SIT).

“We have decided to discontinue the Volksverschlüsselungsdienst to be able to use our resources for newly developed, future-oriented security solutions,” it said in a brief statement. Looking back, however, the outlook is positive. Together with its partners, including Deutsche Telekom, the company has been able to contribute to making IT security in Germany simpler and more suitable for everyday use, it says. Behind the open-source application Volksverschlüsselung is an infrastructure with which keys are generated, certified, and distributed so that users can use end-to-end encryption when sending emails. Signing and encrypting emails should therefore be easy for everyone.

Despite the announcement, little will initially change for current users. Access to existing installations and certificates will remain the same. From January 31 next year, however, it will no longer be possible to register new users. Updates and support services will also no longer be provided from this date. Various services, such as the directory and revocation service, will then be discontinued.

(akn)