I will clear some things up as I see some misunderstandings and confusion in the messages above.
First things first, the listing of Forward Email is not rejected, they did not get the “no”. As some mentioned we do indeed take time (especially after Skiff) to assess tools on voluntary basis. Like Skiff, Forward Email has been putting a lot of pressure on the community and team members to get included. That was the reasons their thread got locked as it did not bring new discussion items. Yet we determined that an audit was necessary. The audit was also announced but never delivered. Yet we do see a quite different design in how they handle the encryption and thus there is the question if that will be as good. Besides that personally I have some reservations about the usability as the UX is rather not the same as Proton or Tuta. So that’s to sum up somewhat of the status.
Now Forward Email was allowed like any other brand to keep posting product updates in the showcase category. This often was received quite spammy by the community. In both threads Forward Email tagged our team members constantly and they had been asked not to.
Besides this all Forward Email has been spreading false information on our current recommendations, mainly on Tuta and Proton. Generally them putting into question other recommendations in the same category is a violation of the Conflict of Interest Policy. Forward Email has now multiple times public and non public, without evidence, accused other providers of having a backdoor. This is not just a red flag for Forward Email but also a violation of our Community Code of Conduct. It leaves me with no other option than to suspend Forward Email from the forum, but note this last action is taken after they themselves announced to not participate further.