Suppose you want to email some sensitive information such as your banking info and social security numbers, I suggest to use encryption because it made email attacker's job much harder, and it is easy to accomplish.
To securely encrypt your email, you need at least encrypt two things:
First Thing: Encrypt The Connection
If you don't encrypt your connection, other users on your network can easily capture information such as your email login credentials and sending and receiving messages.
How
First you need to set up SSL and TLS encryption which is the same protection scheme you use for checking your bank account or making online payment. Check your email with a Web browser, and ensure that SSL/TLS encryption is active. If it does, the URL shows https instead of http. Most current email-providers such as Gmail and Hotmail offer SSL/TLS so mostly it is done automatically.
Second Thing: Encrypt The Messages
When your email messages are sent, leaving your email provider and traveling over the internet, it becomes vulnerable to attack. For example, bad guys can always intercept your message when it is bouncing from one server to the other.
How
To make this protection work properly, you and the recipient should do some work ahead of time. One option is to use the encryption features originally from your email service. The other option is download an encryption software such as OpenPGP. If you are in hurry, there is Sendinc available, and it is Web-based encryption email service.
Your post about e-mail encryption is very informative. I definitely learned some new things. I agree that any important information, such as your credit card information or your identity information, should be encrypted, so random people would have a harder time of decrypting the information. It is important for people to know the difference between http and https as a future reference. It is good to know that some e-mail providers automatically provide SSL/TLS encryption. The more protection you have, the better.
ReplyDeleteHi Tin,
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job on choosing this topic. Security in email is one of the important topics in communication and security. Email is the most important form of communication according to me. So the data send and received must be safe. Your post is really informative. The links you have provided with you with this post supported the content very well. You could have explained couple of other methods in email security.
Overall, it is a very good post!
I agree, email is current one of the main ways which we communicate with each other nowadays. We send and receive message from our smartphone as well as our email. Sometime the content in the emails are somewhat sensitive. If we don't have any encryption in place, when hacker was able to get a hold of you emails, they would be able to read it. As of right now, my email don't really have alot of sensitive information on it. However, it would be a good practice for me to start using it before I go into the industry. Thank you for your suggestion.
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