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Software engineers from Golden Frog, a digital security and privacy firm, found they were unable to send encrypted messages for a period of time over Cricket’s mobile network…

It compromises the idea that internet traffic should be able to move freely across networks.

Golden Frog brought up the issue in a filing to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) back in July, whilst Techdirt also posted an article on the issue. Subsequent tests which were undertaken shortly after the publication posted their article revealed that Cricket had indeed removed the restriction.

Cricket, however, did not address questions about the issue or alert customers that these restrictions will be in-place and that they would be unable to protect their files from outside parties. It’s unknown how many customers were affected by this decision.

In a comment to the Washington Post, Cricket said they are “continuing to investigate the issue but do not intentionally prevent customers from sending encrypted emails.”

Typically, an encrypted email server will “ask” the receiving email server if it is ok to receive the communication. According to Golden Frog, in Cricket’s case the email didn’t even get that far, and was deleted before even asking the receiving server for permission.

Golden Frog found the issue after one of its own engineers who lived in rural Texas and relied on Cricket’s service kept trying to send emails which weren’t being received. The firm found emails were attempted to be sent – stripped of their encryption requests – through a portal known as ‘Port 25’ which many ISPs have blocked due to spam concerns.

Net Neutrality has become a heated debate in recent times due to ISPs wanting to implement “slow lanes” for services which use their bandwidth and do not pay for the luxury. In the FCC filing against Cricket, Golden Frog brought up the issue and said it compromises the idea that internet traffic should be able to move freely across networks.

Do you think ISPs should be allowed to refuse encryption? Let us know in the comments.