Regardless of how you might feel about NSA whistle blower Edward Snowdon, his revelations have sparked much needed discussions on ways to protect our privacy. With this in mind, Google is encouraging email users to ensure that the emails they are sending are encrypted, so anyone monitoring the Internet would be unable to read them.
Citing that as much as 50% of email traffic sent to or from Gmail accounts isn’t encrypted, Google has posted a Transparency Report, showing users if their email provider has encryption turned on. Currently many providers have turned on encryption while others say they are planning to do so. The encryption works only if both sides of the email transaction, both the sender and the recipient’s provider are using the encryption protocol, called Transport Layer Security, or TLS. For example, both Gmail and AOL have TLS turned on. So all e-mails between Gmail and AOL users are encrypted as they travel over the Internet’s public backbone.
While TLS encryption isn’t enough to stop a sophisticated snooper, it makes it more difficult and therefore for expensive to read someone’s email. Additionally, TLS only works as email messages travel over the public internet but not once they reach the email servers. To remedy this, Google plans to create a plug-in for its Chrome brower that will allow users to encypt their email “end to end”. Recognizing that this sort of encryption will probably only be used for very sensitive messages, Google hopes that the “end to end” extension will make it easier for people to have that extra layer of security when they need it.
Email encryption is just one of the tools available to protect your privacy. In our TechRec blog post “Cover Your Tracks and Protect Your Online Privacy” we cover a number of free privacy-friendly service options available. It’s important to take some time to evaluate the different tools that defend against different threats to determine which might work best to help protect your personal information.
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