GMX Mail

GMX was founded in 1997 by German web portal, which now occurs primarily as a provider of e -mail services. GMX is one with former competitors Web.de to 1 & 1 Mail & Media GmbH, headquartered in Montabaur and a branch office in Munich, which in turn a subsidiary of 1 & 1 Internet AG, or of the United Internet Group is. The acronym stands for GMX Global Message eXchange ( to German Global Message Exchange ) and this term is no longer used today.

History

GMX was established in 1997 as one of the first German Internet portals. In April 1998, the founding of the GMX GmbH by Karsten Schramm, Eric Dolatre, Peter Köhnkow and Raoul Haagen, which should speed up the offer advertising-financed and commercial e- mail accounts, among other things took place. GMX recorded at this time 250,000 members, the end of 1998 there were half a million to May 1999 the number rose to one million. GMX is one of the most far-reaching offers in the German-speaking Internet.

Also in 1998 acquired the 1 & 1 GmbH & Co. KG, which later became the United Internet AG was established, a share of 50 percent in GMX GmbH. To the new structure of the company to take into account changed the GMX GmbH in 2000, its legal form to a joint stock company.

In early 2001 GMX went into cooperation with Tomorrow Focus, which has since delivering content for the Internet portal and take over a large part of marketing. At CeBIT 2001, a revised proposal was presented under the name The new GMX that performed a clear separation between e- mail and messaging portal.

In 2002 exceeded the number of members of the 10 million. The reason for this is that GMX offers the use of a personal domain for the e -mail mailbox. In addition, GMX made ​​her first appearance as an Internet provider and offered to dial-up and DSL rates. At the same again changed the legal form of a limited liability company.

To cope with the growth of the number of members, GMX 2003 moved into its own data center in Karlsruhe under the umbrella of Schlund Partner, which also belong to United Internet. In the following years, the cooperation with Deutsche Telekom has been expanded to increase the business with DSL connections, having to entertain without a private backbone.

The end of 2008 GMX began with the expansion into Switzerland and prepared its Internet portal specifically designed to. Furthermore, a download portal for free- and shareware was presented. In October 2009, GMX participated in a pilot project for the introduction of De-Mail in Friedrichshafen together with WEB.DE.

Products

In addition to the Internet portal that contains news of different categories, the focus of GMX is to e- mail inboxes. In this case, users have three options available:

• GMX Free Email 1 gigabyte of storage for e- mails, 1.0 gigabytes of photos and files, dispatch of 10 free SMS per month
• GMX ProMail: 5 gigabytes of storage for e- mails, 5.0 gigabytes of photos and files, dispatch of 50 free SMS a month, faxing, ad-free surface
• GMX TopMail: 10 gigabytes of storage space for e- mails, 10 gigabytes of photos and files, Delivery of 100 free SMS per month, faxing, ad-free interface security package

GMX GMX ProMail and TopMail is toll tariffs, which include an individual e -mail domain.

Criticism

2000 GMX was awarded at the ceremony of privacy negative prize Big Brother Awards in the category of communication,

" Because the company has secured the electronic mail of your users and user insufficient. Two incidents in the summer of 2000, to give occasion. "

In July 2012, it was announced that, many user accounts have been spied on by a hacker attack on GMX, which was confirmed by representatives of the company now. It is clearly demonstrated how to bypass the protective mechanism of GMX by distributed logon attempts. Critics complain that GMX users leave in the dark about how well their account is protected and whether it has been hacked by a third party.

In August 2012, the Consumer Federation issued a warning against GMX, as they are the button solution (according to § 312e BGB) saw not implemented correctly. The warning letter also addressed the brand Web.de. Web.de had indeed taken over the term cash paid order for the order button, key elements of the contract were not placed directly next to it.

A change from the cost- based offers ProMail and TopMail for free Free Mail is " only with considerable effort " possible.

After GMX had bills and, subsequently, reminders and debt collection to customers of its free free e-mail accounts on the grounds that they had ordered a pay service, processed, and consumers could not recall an appropriate contract modification, the Austrian Association for Consumer Information legal defects complained of a and won. GMX undertook it, both to refrain from using illegal clauses like to inform consumers the law of contracts negotiated on the internet. See also the judgment of the European Court of Justice in the article Fernabsatzrecht.

In February 2014 GMX launched a campaign against ad blocker, which has been called " scare campaign ", which have the aim to deceive users.