Need to send someone a number very sensitive data in an encrypted email? Of course, you can always send it over regular email channels, but you run the risk of someone knowing how to capture emails as they’re sent over the Internet. When it comes to email encryption, you have to encrypt the connection and encrypt the email itself.
The first problem is partly covered by the email provider. For example, when you use Gmail, the connection is encrypted with SSL, and you’ll see HTTPS in the address bar.
This means that anything you send from your computer to the Gmail server will be encrypted. However, once an email leaves Google’s servers and travels through the Internet, it may not be fully encrypted to its final destination. At that point, you have to make sure that the email itself is encrypted, so even if it were intercepted by someone, it would just be pointless.
Implementing encryption inside your existing email client, whether it’s Gmail or Outlook, requires initial setup and a few extra steps for it to be read by recipients. Unfortunately, no email provider offers built-in encryption that works transparently between sender and recipient. Google has said that it testing end-to-end encryption for Gmail via a Chrome extension, but as of the time of this writing, it has not yet released the tool.
So basically your only option is to install complex encryption schemes on your computer or into your browser via an extension and then exchange the public key with the person you want. send an email or simply use an online service to send an encrypted message. The second option is much easier and basically just requires the recipient to enter a password that you provide them exclusively via email, phone, text, etc.
In this article, I will list a few tools to send encrypted emails without the big hassles of installing encryption software and using your actual email client to send encrypted emails. . I’ll make sure to update this post when Google releases their end-to-end encryption tool for Gmail. The only caveat is that the service won’t work unless both the sender and recipient are using Google Chrome and Gmail. I guess it’s still better than nothing.
If you are only interested in sending encrypted email to a small number of people who also don’t mind setting up encryption on their end, then follow this guide here explains how you can set up encryption in an email client like Thunderbird or Postbox or even in Gmail or Yahoo, but with the same restriction that the recipient will also need to use encryption software.
Setting up your own encryption is also a good idea if you are sharing highly sensitive information and you cannot trust any third party entities. All of the services I mention below are private companies subject to US law, which means a government agency can force them to decrypt anything on their servers if so ordered. . Even if they cannot decrypt the data to the police, they will be asked to give up the encrypted data. If the police can then crack the encryption, you’re in luck.
Secure Mail for Gmail
As I mentioned earlier, Google will be releasing an encryption extension for Chrome soon, but in the meantime you can check it out. Secure Mail for Gmail, which does pretty much the same thing. After installing the extension, you will notice a new padlock icon next to it Compose, compile button.
If you click Compose you will get the normal compose window in Gmail, but if you click on the padlock icon you will get a secure email form as shown below with a red header and words “Safe“At top.
Type your message normally and then click Send encrypted button. A new dialog box will pop up asking you to enter the encryption password.
The recipient will receive an email with a bunch of encrypted text with a link to download and install the Secure Gmail extension. As mentioned before, it will only work if the recipient is using Gmail and Chrome, otherwise they won’t be able to read the content of the email.
Overall, it’s a great solution for a specific purpose, and since I use Gmail a lot and most of the people I email also use Gmail, it works well. Sometimes I just have to convince them to use Google Chrome, but that’s it. Hopefully this extension will be expanded further in the future with a version for different browsers in addition to support for other email services.
Lockbin
Lockbin does all the dirty work of encrypting the data for you with strong encryption algorithms etc, so all you have to do is think about the password and click Submit.
Here’s how it works: when you want to send a message, you first need to come up with a secret word or password, which is used by their cryptographic algorithm to encrypt and store the email on your computer. their owner. You then need to pass this password on to the person who will receive the email via phone, text message, IM, or via unprotected email!
The recipient then goes to Lockbin and enters his password to decrypt the email in their local browser. The actual decryption does not take place on the server, and therefore no data is transmitted over the Internet during decryption. As soon as the email is opened, the encrypted message is permanently deleted from the Lockbin server; no copies or backups are kept. This is how my “I have a secret” message is stored on the Lockbin server.
When the user opens the encrypted email, the recipient can print it or export it as a PDF. If no one has ever viewed the message, the message will remain encrypted on the Lockbin server for up to 6 months before being deleted.
Sendinc Email Encryption
Sendinc has some solutions to secure email problems that I really like. Firstly, the free service they offer allows you to send 20 messages per day with attachments up to 10MB. Two other features that I really like are the free smartphone app and the free Outlook add-on. This allows you to send secure email from your phone or from Outlook without having to worry about encryption keys.
On the recipient’s side, all they need is a web browser to be able to view the emails. To use the service, you must create an account, and the same is true for the recipient if they want to read the message. Sendinc doesn’t ask you to create a password because any recipient who receives the email will be able to decrypt the content as long as they create an account. That’s more convenient, but you have to be more careful so that the link doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Overall, it works well, and I like the fact that they have mobile apps and an Outlook add-in. To receive encrypted emails from recipients again, they will have to use the service in the same way. In all these cases, it’s basically the same as using a new email provider just to send secure emails.
There are a bunch of other sites that do the same thing as mentioned above, so I won’t list those because those work incredibly well and have the most features, etc. Again, email inherently insecure and until someone comes up with a better way to send emails you will be stuck with half-baked solutions that require using a third party to send emails or require you to install pretty software complexity on your machine and the recipient machine. If you have questions, post a comment. Interesting!
