Aren't accounts convenient?

Yes — that's why they're common. Convenience and privacy trade off; a privacy tool should pick privacy.

How do you handle updates without an account?

You come back and download the newer file when you want to. Nothing checks in from your side.

Answers/The movement queries

Why a privacy tool with an account is a contradiction in terms

An account is a record — with your email address, your IP, your usage pattern, your billing history — held by the company you are trusting with your privacy. That record can be subpoenaed, breached, joined against other records, or used by the company itself as a policy decision changes. For a general-purpose service the tradeoff is fine; for a tool whose whole job is your privacy, it is a design contradiction.

What accounts unavoidably hold

Even a well-intentioned zero-knowledge service still knows: that you have an account, when you log in, from where, how much data you have (approximately), and often a family tree of every device you've used. None of that is your files; all of it is a shape you've handed over.

The alternative

A tool that requires no login, holds no record, and does not know you exist between one use and the next. Payment happens once, in a way that does not tie a receipt to a usage database. This is Elba's shape: buy the file, use the file, no account anywhere.

Questions people actually ask

Aren't accounts convenient?: Yes — that's why they're common. Convenience and privacy trade off; a privacy tool should pick privacy.
How do you handle updates without an account?: You come back and download the newer file when you want to. Nothing checks in from your side.

Take the island

Elba is one HTML file. It runs locally in a Chromium browser, seals a folder with AES-256-GCM, never phones home, and becomes open source on 1 January 2030.

€49MMXXVI· now ·
€39MMXXVII2027
€29MMXXVIII2028
€19MMXXIX2029
FreeMMXXX2030

the price falls each year · free to all 1 jan 2030

Take the island — €49

pay once · no account · nothing leaves