monocles - an ecofriendly and secure way of using the internet

About monocles

monocles is a project founded to move to a more secure, ecofriendly, privacy respecting, fair and open source technical and digital life for everyone. monocles search is one of the most privacy-respecting, secure and ethical public search engine due to the highly modified open source meta-search engine Searx, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing information about its users and directly powered with renewable energy.
But that's just one little function you can use. We try to offer a complete independency from big companies while protection your data and communications with decentralized and open source services and applications.

monocles is not a closed platform like many others. It is your secure access to an independent worldwide network.

Read more and become a member or support the project.

how to use your account?

Use more secure online solutions

Communicate and use the internet really privately and ecoconsciously. With just one monocles account you can use all these different open source online services and (web-)applications. There's more to come.

use the world's most privacy-respecting, secure and ethical public search engine based on a highly modified meta-search engine combined with two peer-to-peer search engines. No one will ever know what you search nor show you ads. Protect your privacy and never become tracked again.

get access to our cloud and collaborative productivity platform. Synchronize your calender, contacts, notes or data and use it everywhere in a browser or end-to-end encrypted with apps on your devices.

use monocles e-mail. One of the most secure and the most ethical public e-mail server, to exchange your electronic letters with high security standards on a encrypted mail server with additionally end-to-end encrypted mail storage.

use the most ethical chat, based on a secure, privacy focused and open international standard to quickly exchange with your family, friends and business contacts from any device with end-to-end encrypted messages. You can even make end-to-end encrypted audio/video calls if needed!

though videoconferencing consumes a lot of ressources during the current situation you can use monocles videoconference to virtually meet your family, friends or colleagues through encrypted connections.

get access to a privacy friendly and fair social network with millions of users through the platform mastodon. Just register with your monocles mail.

❹+

use monocles privacy focused, secure, free and open source android apps optimized for the use with your monocles account.

NEW: Order a secure privacy focused mobile phone preinstalled with the monocles applications and several security and privacy setups. Or send us your android based smartphone (currently only Pixel 6 and Pixel 6a) to convert it to a more privacy and security respecting mobile phone.

For companies, institutions and groups

We're offering solutions for ethical companies and groups too! Do you have an ecoconcious or ethical company and want to show your employers and customers you're taking care about the environment, security and privacy?
Just get in touch with us and present you're company or institution on monocles.social!

monocles security

Compliance and security tests

Assure yourself or others that we are really doing our best to protect your data and privacy by checking the security and functions of monocles or other services

Chat results

✓"A+" xmpp.net:

✓"A+" rating on CryptCheck:

✓100% conversations compliance test:

E-Mail

✓100% on Hardenize

✓"A+" on CryptCheck

✓100% rating e-mail security:

(The tool is currently not working anymore)

✓10/10 on Mail-Tester.com:

Cloud (Ocean)

✓"A+" rating on CryptCheck

✓"A+" rating Nextcloud security:

✓"A+" rating on Mozilla's Observatory:

Websearch/Webserver

✓100% on Hardenize

✓"A+" rating on Mozilla's Observatory:

✓"A+" rating on immuniweb:

✓"A+" rating on CryptCheck:

✓"A+" rating on Qualys SSL Labs:

✓Also best ratings on several other known tests on Mozilla's Observatory

If you ever find a weakness please contact us quickly and we'll immediately correct any issues.
Thanks in advance

protecting the environment

How we try to protect the environment

We are running our own servers!

The monocles.de main servers are powered by our own solar plant. Shorter power connections save a lot of energy. Only when really needed do we use renewable energy from external energy providers to ensure constant availability

We also try to employ used parts as much as possible or even recycle old things to build up and upgrade the solar system and the server station with respect to the security of your data and stability of the connection. Recycling and reusing things as much as possible is the best we can do to minimize the damages towards the environments.

* New: Because of the increased traffic we have to temporary host the monocles.eu instance on a trustworthy hosting provider which also uses renewable energy for the servers. This is only necessary until we have enough resources to host it at our datacenter.

Help us saving the planet and ecosystem.

more about

This website is hosted Green - checked by thegreenwebfoundation.org

... and how we protect your data

The monocles project is online since the 28th february 2018. The locked monocles.de server rack is standing in Germany. Only the four admins, who can each individually maintain the operation of the system in case one fails, can have access to the servers with a key, a long password and a TOTP code. Additionally the server is fully encrypted to avoid any intruders to get access to your files. Even the end-to-end encrypted files and messages are fully encrypted. We make automatic backups every 3 hours and seperated backups every 7 days. The seperated backups are stored outside the servers building in a fireproof safe.
To avoid power outage or data loss, the servers and routers are connected to uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). The 250 mbit/s internet connection has a LTE fallback to keep monocles online.

what you get

A monocles account

...includes all you need to communicate and work securely and ecofriendly without being tracked. So here is a simple and short summary of what you can get with a normal account.

Cloud

Access to monocles ocean with plenty of additional functions and with at least 4 GB of storage for your documents and data. Optionally, more storage can be available.

E-Mail

A monocles e-mail account with 2 GB storage and a webclient to use it everywhere you are.
For sure you can generate pgp keys or use your own keys!

Chat

A monocles chat account with temporary storage for 2 month and access to a worldwide network. Accessible through our android app, through monocles interact or with many other xmpp clients on many platforms.

Video conference

With your monocles account you can make secure conferences through monocles ocean. Even public with everyone.

social network

Access to a privacy friendly and fair social network with millions of users through the platform mastodon. Just register with your monocles mail.

Web search

Though the monocles web search is free to use for everyone it is mentionable here nevertheless because you get the privacy respecting monocles webbrowser for android too!

We need your help too

monocles is completely privately funded and therefore unabated by companies or organizations. To pay our bills and keep our services available and protect the ecosystem and your digital life we also need your help. We think it is much more important to take care of your privacy, security and the ecosystem than wasting money on entertainment or an unhealthy meal. Invest your money more ethically and use open source services and applications.

Please donate a litte to support this project or get a payed monocles account. Go open source!

donate / pay

Please pick one of the donation or payment methods

If you already signed up and didn't pay please send us the payment for at least 6 month for the full account (=30€) or for the starter account also for 6 month (=12€) together with your new monocles e-mail address in the reference. Without this reference we can't relate it and must handle it as donation.

credit card

PayPal

Donation

more methods

Bank transfer

monocles c/o
Arne-Brün Vogelsang
BIC/SWIFT-Code: TRWIBEB1XXX
IBAN: BE21 9671 7181 0103

Monero

45iYRJiQSW15h2R3a1qyN1B8bcQHjrMG5aUcQvfe7hQdVgQXPbUJEaTUyVvDHnnQfsTZA6fLYDd21D7Nsn2Di8mC2ru5EJj

Per letter

monocles c/o
Arne-Brün Vogelsang
Flensburger Strasse 52
28219 Bremen
Germany

VAT ID no.: DE338256822