Purism’s New Offering is a Dream Come True for Privacy Concerned People

Brief: Purism, the privacy focused company behind Librem laptops and smartphone, has unveiled a new suite of services to further serve the privacy aware people.

You probably have heard about Purism. It’s a ‘Social Purpose Corporation’ that has created the PureOS Linux distribution, Librem series of laptops and Librem5 Linux-based smartphone. All of their products are focused on protecting your privacy and giving you entire control over your data.

Purism has increased its offering for privacy and security concerned people with a new bundle of service, called Librem One.

Librem One: A collection of encrypted services for privacy aware people

Librem One is a suite of encrypted services that protects your privacy by allowing you to securely communicate with other people.

Today, Librem One consists of the following services:

• Librem Chat – end-to-end encrypted chat, VOIP, and video calling based on Matrix (like Riot)
• Librem Mail – end-to-end encrypted email service like Tutanota and ProtonMail
• Librem Tunnel – end-to-end encrypted VPN tunnel
• Librem Social – decentralized social media (sort of Mastodon)

That’s not it. There are some other services in the pipeline that will be added to Librem One suite of services later and will be available to all Librem One users.

• Librem Files – pay-as-you-go end-to-end encrypted cloud storage
• Librem Backup – pay-as-you-go end-to-end encrypted long-term full cloud backups
• Librem Contacts – end-to-end encrypted contact sync and storage
• Librem Pay – cryptographic payments
• Librem Dial – pay-as-you-go phone service

Librem One pricing: Part free, part paid

If you just want to use the Librem Chat and Librem Social, you don’t have to pay anything. You can download these apps on Google Play store and Apple Store. No love for F-Droid?

Rest of the Librem One services come at a cost but that cost is not your data like other free services in the same domain. You won’t see ads, there won’t be trackers and your privacy will be respected.

At launch, complete Librem One has the following pricing:

What do you think of Purism and Librem?

Purism was founded in 2014 with a purpose and that purpose was to enable privacy aware people protect their data. Their products are top-notch, both in terms of quality and pricing ($1300 for a laptop). Their targeted market is people who must secure their data. Journalists, whistle-blowers, social activists are a few of such examples.

But this doesn’t mean that general public cannot and should not use their products. If you are concerned about your privacy, you’ll have to take an extra step to secure it.

What do you think of Purism and Librem? What you think of the entire privacy debate? Is it worth paying extra for services that promise to protect your data? Do share your views.