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HOW TO SEND ENCRYPTED EMAILS
By Tyler Lacoma — July 26, 2015
digitaltrends.com
Long has the war for
email privacy been fought – and it looks we’ll keep fighting far into the
future. People have always wanted to make sure than only the recipient can read
email messages. Some worry about identity theft and sensitive company data that
can be stolen. Others dislike the idea of government prying and interference
(the current powers of the NSA have unsurprisingly led to a resurgence in email
encryption).
While the average email
service doesn’t do much to protect your email – which is why they can be
collected and used quite easily by others – there is another level of service
that offers email encryption. Essentially, this encodes email contents into
gibberish and only lets the recipient decode the email and read it. If
encrypted emails sound good to you, you’re in luck. There are dozens of
encryption options available these days, from plugins to web services.
Let’s take a look at the best and how to use them.
Quick words on PGP and
encryption
Let’s talk a little bit about encryption so you get an idea of
what you are jumping into. Cryptography software used for communication dates
all the way back to 1991 when Phil Zimmermann created what he called PGP or
Pretty Good Privacy. While that’s not exactly the most confident name, PGP
proved its worth and quickly became the go-to source for encryption in the
1990s.
This original PGP worked
by creating a public key and a private key, the former used to encrypt a
message and the latter to decrypt it so it can be read. It also involved
elements of crowd-sourced trust and other important elements of web security. You can read all about it if you want to.
Eventually PGP was
replaced with the OpenPGP standard and GnuPG, but the term
PGP stuck around, which is why you still here it used today when discussing
email encryption. Today’s email encryption tools tend to use various
implementations of this modern-day PGP.
Encryption with your
current email
Probably the easiest way to get encrypted emails is to use your
current email client or service – that way you don’t have to get used to any
new software. Fortunately, there are several encryption options for popular
email services like:
§ Gmail: Gmail does not yet
support native email encryption. This might change in the future, but for now
you need to do a little work to enable encryption for this platform. Head on
over to the Chrome store and look for encryption extensions. One of the most
popular is Mailvelope, which
works with several major webmail providers and uses Google’s own tools for
encryption. Another popular option isSecure Mail,
although this works only between two Chrome Gmail users. Both add basic
encryption buttons that allow you to encrypt an email for a specific reader.
The process is pretty easy.
§ Outlook: Possibly because
of its popularity in the business world, Outlook does support encryption right
out of the box, but the encryption tool is well hidden. To encrypt a message,
you need to head over to the Options tab, go
to More Options, select Message Options, go
to Security Settings, and then chooseEncrypt message contents and attachments. Whew. You can
also choose to encrypt all your
outgoing messages through the Trust Center.
If you use Office 365, you can also use message encryption through this
service, along with some other handy security features. You have to purchase it
along with Microsoft Azure Rights Management ($2 per user per
month).
§ Yahoo mail: Yahoo mail
actually borrows some of Google’s tech to help protect its email. There are
therefore OpenPGP encryption plugins that you can download
to add some extra security for your emails. However, if you use Chrome then by
all means go straight to downloading Mailvelope, because
it also works with Yahoo emails and it’s a simple add-on.
Web-based encrypted
emails
Your other option in the
big encryption game is web-based email encrypters, which allow you to login
into a separate piece of software on the web and use it to send your emails or
add extra features to your old services. Some are made for home use, and
some are made for more professional environments.
§ Sendinc: Sendinc is
a handy encryption service for small business owners and others. You can hop
onto the web interface to send emails if you want, or check out the platform
integration with Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and others. However, you will have
to pay for it – the cheapest version of Sendinc costs $4 per month.
§ Virtru: Virtru offers a
broad selection of add-ons for Android, Apple, Outlook, Firefox, and other
platforms, but offers no webmail services, so you will have to do some
micromanaging on your old email. Flip the Virtru switch when you want to start
encrypting messages, and turn it off when you don’t. You can revoke encryption
whenever you want, and it works with a “keyless” encryption that makes it
easier for email receivers. The basic version is totally
free.
§ Lockbin: Lockbin skips the
whole add-on phase and goes straight to making web mail encryption easy. You
can go straight to the Lockbin website and type
up an email right now if you want to, including attachments and
your password/key. Send as many as you like for free, as long as its just you
on the network. If you have more than one user, the price jumps dramatically to
$10 per month.
§ ProtonMail: ProtonMail is a
more unique case. This is a Swiss-based project that uses what they call “zero
access architecture” to create an email client so people can send messages that
cannot be overseen by anyone else, with a particular nod toward governments.
The encryption happens entirely on the client device and ProtonMail has no
access to user data, so it can’t dig into user accounts and forward any
details. ProtonMail is still in the early venture stages, and it is a bit
unclear how effective it will really be – and how it will fair against new
competitors like Tutanota. If you are interested, you can request
to join the beta.
§ Hushmail: Hushmail gets some
points for being around for a very long time and offering options for individuals,
businesses, healthcare and resellers. You can also create unlimited email
aliases and download a specific mobile version for your phone. However, it
loses a lot of points because Hushmail apparentlycannot
protect your data from the NSA or any other government
agencies.
§ Andrew Couts also contributed to this post.
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