Summary
Email wasn’t originally designed with security in mind. While all emails are encrypted while in transit, they can be decrypted by the email providers involved. However, if you want to send an email that no one besides the recipient will be able to read, there are several ways to do it.
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Email was not intended to be a secure communication channel. Today, emails are protected by encryption at various points, but they’re also decrypted at points as they’re transmitted. If you have a message that needs an added layer of security, there are ways you can add your own encryption to your emails.
For Personal Tech Media, this is Two Minute Tech. I’m Jim Herman.
Most email providers encrypt your messages while they’re in transit, and they usually encrypt them while they’re being stored. But the email provider, which is Gmail, Yahoo, or one of the other options, has the key and can decrypt and read those emails at any time.
However, there’s other email options that provide even stronger security. ProtonMail, Tutanote, Hushnote, and StartMail are providers that encrypt your incoming messages upon arrival. Once they are encrypted, you are the only one who can decrypt the contents of that email.
Most of these services also use end-to-end encryption for emails that are sent to other users. End-to-end encryption means the email service never sees the unencrypted message, and that service won’t even be able to decrypt them without your password.
If you don’t want to give up your current email address, you can download the Mozilla Thunderbird application and use OpenPGP to send encrypted messages. OpenPGP uses a similar encryption process, ensuring that only you and the intended recipient can read the message. However, OpenPGP is a little more difficult to set up and use, and it requires the recipient to have it set up on their email as well.