After a lengthy evaluation of internal priorities, developmental commitments and prevailing market conditions, Comodo has decided to discontinue development and support of Comodo Secure Email, Comodo Antispam and Comodo Verification Engine.
We would like to thank everybody, past and present, that helped to bring these inspired products to life - including developers, QA, beta-testers, end-users and forum members for their valued feedback. While it is never easy to make announcements of this kind, we would also like to stress that this decision will allow us greater freedom to focus on the development of the other new and exciting products in our portfolio.
Along with the recent launch of Comodo Unite, the next few months will see the release of Comodo Internet Security 2012, Comodo Endpoint Security Manager BE, Comodo AntiSpam Gateway, Comodo Backup 4.0, Comodo Faster Master and Comodo Online Storage. Comodo remains committed to our goal of bringing innovative, unique and cost-effective security software to market for all types of users. Community forums for the discontinued products will remain online indefinitely.
Edit by EricJH: made a paragraph structure for an easier read
Hmm I can just about see why Antispam (CAS) was discontinued - though it had great potential, some investment was needed.
But CSE is a great little program already, well designed and with only a little simple updating required, AND with much potential for widespread use and therefore marketing potential for Comodo.
No-one thought how CSE could act virally to market Comodo’s products?
Q2) Will the one time encryption and free secure reader service continue?
Answer: Unfortunately this will become unavailable over the next few weeks. This feature is currently unavailable to users who recently signed up with CSE.
Q3) Will downloads continue to be available?
Answer: Again, downloads will soon cease to be available due to the incorrect operation of some features of the current downloadable release.
Q4) Will the CSE forum board remain live (read/write)?
Answer: Yes, however, the board will shortly be moved to the following location: “Archived Boards/ Discontinued Products”.
Q5) A user asked if they get a cert today from Comodo will they be able to replace it by one from someone else after it expires?”
Answer: Yes however the question is a little malformed. Certificates aren’t directly replaced/renewed in such a manner, rather, a new certificate is issued for use and the old certificate is still valid for items it encrypted/signed during its validity period. Users can sign up for a new certificate at any time. As pointed out in the answer to Q1 above, Comodo’s free e-mail certificate product will continue be available for the users at the following product page: Free Secure Email Certificate with Digital Signature 2022
Thanks Shane, much appreciated. Very clear answers. Good that certs will remain available.
Still whole situation a great pity I think.
Perhaps the greatest problem for current users will be the removal of the secure read/one time certificate service , as it means that users that continue to use CSE have functionality signifiacntly impaired.
Maybe you could ask Melih if this could be reviewed?
Clarification of the malfunction (am I right in presuming it is serious in some way?) would be appreciated, by PM if you wish. Including whether this extends to the LSP version. I’ve experienced difficulties with the plug-in, but none proven yet on my machine with the LSP.
After numerous bug reports, the teams investigated the problem which took some time to discover the exact nature of why some features of CSE stopped working correctly. The crux is that due to changes in Comodo’s certificate issuance policies where some fields required by the CSE application were no longer where expected and the product ceased to function correctly for some features for those who recently signed up for e-mail certificates.
The discontinuance of SecureEmail is a great loss. So far as I am aware its functionality is not included in any other Comodo product, and I am unaware of any other product apart from pgp that will result in the email being received in the clear in the email client, which is essential to preserving the email client’s full functionality. A slimmer product that merely achieves that and ensures that emails are always sent encrypted where there is a public certificate on board for the addressee, or warns when there has been but is no longer, would be most welcome, and well worth purchasing. Surely there is a future for email encryption, is there not?
The key functions of SecureEmail are in my opinion: 1. Enabling the encryption and decryption to take place outside the e-mail client so that all e-mail is sent and received by the e-mail client in the clear, and hence so that full functionality of the e-mail client is preserved; and 2. Providing a mechanism whereby e-mails are encrypted by default where there is a certificate for the addressee, to reduce the risk of sensitive information accidentally being sent in the clear. Incidentally, I wonder whether the latter mechanism in the current version of SecureEmail is subverted where the certificate has accidentally been deleted.
The marketing of secure e-mail could point out these functions more clearly. In fact, I am aware of no mention of either of them in either the promotional or the explanatory literature.
Publishing a short explanation - say 3 sides of A4 - of the principles of encryption of e-mail, together with an explanation of how secure e-mail supplements the Microsoft e-mail clients and other e-mail clients might considerably enhance the uptake of e-mail encryption functionality, and perhaps enable secure e-mail to be marketed on a paying basis.
You could try lazarus, a browser facility to save form text in a context specific manner. AV for Chrome, but I’m not sure what other browsers. Works well.
Agree re time out, but not my bag I am afraid. Have wondered whether ‘keep me logged in forever’ option on log-in might help?
In my opinion, the one-time certificate service is not central, although I can see that there will be little uptake until it is effortless, simple and risk free for a correspondent to set himself up for encryption. Apart from a an easy set up for correspondents, or ‘diffusion route’, the key function is the removal of encryption and decryption to a proxy so that the email client deals with email in the clear. And second after that is functionality to encrypt by default where there is or has been a certificate for the addressee. If a program with just those functions could be rescued from the wreck and maintained it would be of great value, and I for one would be happy to pay for such a program. A correspondent who is willing to go through with installing encryption software is likely to be able and willing to go through the very simple process of signing up for and downloading a certificate as a separate exercise.
My thanks to Mouse1 for his very helpful replies to all my posts. I will continue to look out for a revival of SecureEmail in some form, but in view of its current abandonment I can for the time being only turn to trialling pgp. There is however EncryptUs by Firetrust in the pipeline, but it apparently does not currently comply with the s/mime or pgp/mime protocols, which I think is a pity, but I suppose that since any correspondent must have a certificate before you can correspond with him using pki encryption, the key to uptake must be simplification of the set up for the correspondent. If Firetrust can achieve that, then perhaps they will succeed where PGP appear to have failed, since there seem, to me at least, to be very few users of pgp. I hope that Mouse1 will forgive me for not replying separately to each post, but I find it very difficult to get the board to accept my posts - I keep getting the time-out message and have to post over and over again until it accepts the message.
CSE works best when both sender and recipient has a client plugin. In today’s world its a mixture of web based emails and client side code. So one cannot take full advantage of CSE.
Although we are discontinuing CSE for now, our Crusade for secure email is still strong! We are about to launch “Comodo AntiSpam Gateway”, a Cloud based Anti Spam product, which we hope will be the platform to build encryption on top!
Thank you for your reply. I shall look at the new product with interest.
I would not use the plugin because it meant that the email was encrypted in the email client, which means loss of functionality in the email client - no preview pane, and I guess no search functions - and the need to keep expired certificates in order to read old email. And MS tell me that the archive function in Outlook may not work if there is encrypted or digitally signed email in the personal folder being archived!
Good luck with your new product. When will it be released?
I am sorry, but I cannot make any more submissions - it takes so many attempts to get them accepted by the board which keeps complaining that I have timed out or made my submission within 1 second of the previous submission, or that I have already made the same submission when it has not actually recorded it. There is a serious problem there somewhere.