Users Say They'll Pay for Vanished Dark Web Email Service 'Sigaint' to Return

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Users Say They'll Pay for Vanished Dark Web Email Service 'Sigaint' to Return

“Sigaint if you are reading this and plan to never return, please reach out.”

A few weeks ago, one of the most popular dark web email services vanished. Sigaint, which allowed anyone to quickly make a pseudonymous email account over the Tor network, was used by journalists, activists, and criminals. It is still unresponsive at the time of writing.

Some users are so desperate to gain access to their emails, however, that they're apparently willing to pay good money if Sigaint comes back.

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"I personally would be willing to chip in $10,000 for a download of all my emails from my accounts," Reddit user Seaker1948420 posted recently. The user adds that others have claimed they would pay money to get their emails back.

Sigaint ran as a Tor hidden service, meaning users could only connect through the anonymity network. In 2015, Sigaint's admin claimed an attacker—it's not clear who—used dozens of malicious Tor exit nodes in an attempt to spy on the email provider's users. At the time, the service allegedly had around 43,000 users.

"There is no way for us to know what someone is using their email account for as we keep no logs and all mail is encrypted," the administrator claimed in an interview with Deep Dot Web.

When asked if the service would limit any type of content, the admin said, "No. Not at all. We believe in freedom of speech."

Judging by the Reddit post, some users may have stored a significant amount of sensitive information in their Sigaint account.

"Sigaint if you are reading this and plan to never return, please reach out," Seaker1948420 continues. "Stupidly enough, I pretty much stored my entire life on the Sigaint email."

Others are not so hopeful.

"Your emails are gone and they are not coming back anytime soon," another Reddit user adds.

Next time, maybe don't store all your eggs in a single dark web basket.