Why do I need secure E-mail?

We send more and more information thru e-mail that we previously only sent thru registered mail or DHL. Bills, medical journals, annual reports, loveletters…well, it is a long list. And it is ever easier to scan someone's e-mail and read his or her private correspondence. There are several scanning programs available free of charge over the Net and within a few minutes you can scan your neighbours e-mail. One way to protect yourself against this is to encrypt your e-mail. That way - you protect your e-mail and only you and the recipient can read your correspondence.

What is Secure E-mail?

Secure E-mail means that you encrypt the information that you wish to transmit to your recipient. You can do this in a number of ways, but the most common way is to scramble the information (the 1`s and the 0`s that the data consists of) according to a set formula and then to lock this data with a set key. Then you transmit the key to your counterpart who then can unlock the encrypted information. Without the right key, which in the simplest form is just a password, an eavesdropper cannot read your information.

The difficulty is to transmit the key itself in a secure way, since it is this that can unlock your private communication. This transmission is usually solved in one of two ways. Either the sender and the recipient have the SAME set of keys (so called symmetric encryption) or you each have a Private and a Public Key (so called asymmetric encryption). It is hotly debated which is the most secure way around the problem, but suffice it to say that the symmetric encryption is easier to understand for "the man in the Street" - and thus easier to use. User friendliness is in my view a KEY part of the whole security of a certain system, because if you do not understand what you are doing then you will not know when you have done it the wrong way either…!

There are numerous software programs available on the Internet to secure and protect your e-mail and most are of the type where both the sender and the recipient need the SAME software. Try to find a program that fits you, where you do not have to change any of your normal e-mailing routines, nor your e-mail address, etc. Try to find a program that you can use with your normal e-mail program (Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora or whatever you are currently using) and that automatically takes care of your security - so that you can feel secure knowing that you are communicating in total, absolute privacy.

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