Quote:
Originally Posted by markbot
Anyone know what the best way to get secure email is?
Should I just trust gmail, yahoo mail, and hotmail?
I don't like the idea of my emails being saved anywhere, accessible to the email service.
There are services like hushmail out there that state of secure they are....but I still don't trust them.
Anyone setup their own email server?
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It all depends on what exactly you mean by secure. There is no real security with e-mail for a number of reasons.
1) It's plain text and readable as is
2) You have no real control of your e-mail when it leaves your system
For 1, you can encrypt your e-mail with pgp or gpg and send the recipient the key offline.
For 2, you're just out of luck as that's how the Internet works. Your e-mail server looks up the recipients e-mail server and sends it there. That
might sound like it's secure if you control your server and the recipient controls theirs, but what about all the routers and potential servers the mail passes through between those two points?
It all depends on how paranoid you are and what you're trying to achieve. If you read the terms of service for all the free mail providers it gives you an idea of what they do with the e-mail.
If you want true security, don't use e-mail. Use the offline methods. If you want to use e-mail, then encrypt all mail and give a copy of the key to the recipients.
Other than that, you have to accept that you have no real control of what happens to your e-mail once it leaves your system because that's all you can control.
You do have a modicum more control if you have your own server, but what if your recipient uses gmail/hotmail/yahoo etc?
Also, I remember reading somewhere that hushmail received a subpoena and gave up user names, so even that's not guaranteed.
Hope this helps.