By Amit Agarwal
When you send an email, it goes through your Internet Service Provider and a series of mail servers before reaching the recipient’s computer.
Can someone else – such as your network administrator, your ISP, or law-enforcement agencies – intercept and read that confidential message without you knowing?
The odds that someone is snooping on your emails could be low, but even so, the communication may not be as private as you might like. Here are some basic steps you can take to secure your emails:
First, turn on HTTPS Everywhere. When you access your email accounts over a secure HTTP connection (or https), all the traffic flowing between your computer and the mail server will be encrypted, so the bytes, if intercepted, appear as gibberish to any potential snooper.
Second, if you are accessing your email accounts on a public Wi-Fi network – like in a hotel lobby – it might be a good idea to use a VPN service to access the web. Unlike HTTPS, which works only for select websites, a VPN service will encrypt all traffic between your computer and the Internet, protecting your data from the Wi-Fi eavesdroppers. TunnelBear is a free VPN software available for PCs and Macs. It doesn’t require configuration – all you have to do is turn the knob to “ON” and you are protected.
Next, if you are sending confidential messages via email, you should encrypt them before they leave the computer. Encryption may sound like a complex word to most users, but the concept is easy to understand and implement.
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