The Apps You Should Use to Keep Your Email Secure

 

In this day and age, protecting one's privacy can give the impression that it's an irrelevant concern. Your every move could be revealed one day if there is a breach in the system's security or if advertising and internet retailers misuse the information they have access to about you. However, there is still a chance. People from all around the world have devised a multitude of solutions and initiatives to tackle this issue from a wide variety of perspectives. Some of them need payment, but considering the option of using free services that make commercial use of your personal information, it would not be such a bad idea to pay for a legitimate service, especially if the alternative is to use free services that do so.

People who created email certainly didn't anticipate that someone would abuse it. They were unaware that people would read one another's emails or send a ton of spam.

Public-key cryptography is a method used by the kind of privacy apps that aim to shield your email from monitoring and alteration. You can do this using programs like Preveil, Private-Mail, ProtonMail, and StartMail, for instance. Except for Preveil, all of the aforementioned services generate two keys—one public and one private—using the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) protocol. Someone uses your public key to encrypt a secure message they send to you, which you use your private key to decipher.

And Preveil's operating principles are considerably more basic. They use a high-tech mechanism called wrapped keys that doesn't even involve using keys. Because not enough users are aware of how to put things up, you cannot communicate with the users of other PGP-based services.

With the aid of this technology, someone can send you an email that is digitally signed, ensuring that it was truly sent by them and was not altered in any way. Simply said, they encrypt information using a private key, and you decrypt it using a public key. While Private-Mail requires you to carry out the key exchange personally, StartMail and ProtonMail made the procedure of exchanging keys with other users of the same service automatic. Any person who gives a public key can send secure messages using any of the services.

Public key cryptography is not, however, utilized by all. Because of this, you can send encrypted emails to recipients if you use StartMail or ProtonMail, but the level of open-source security isn't quite as high. In this manner, the message is encrypted using a straightforward password, which you provide using a different method other than email.

Although Virtru is a free service, it only functions with Gmail and on Chrome. Similar to Preveil, internal key management is used, however public-key cryptography is not used. The recipient does not need to enter a password to read the message you transmit because it is encrypted.

Therefore, if your email chats are encrypted, cybercriminals cannot decipher what you are saying. However, every time you send an email, make an online purchase, or register for an online service, your email address is still made public. Perhaps that doesn't sound concerning to you, yet many websites typically use your email address as your ID. Because of this, a hacker who breaks your password will then be the owner of the account. Furthermore, exposing your email address in that way just encourages spam.

Is it possible to interact without revealing your email address? Disposable Email Address technology offers a fix for this issue (DEA). This type of service creates and maintains these addresses, ensuring that mail addressed to them reaches you and that your responses appear to have originated from the DEA. You can simply delete it if you've finished doing business with a certain retailer or if your DEA starts to receive spam.

These services include Abine Blur, Burner Mail, and ManyMe, for instance. In many respects, ManyMe is exceptional. First of all, it is a rarity in that it is free. Second, you are not need to create a new FlyBy email in order to use the service, which is not the case with many DEA services. Because of this, if someone at a party asks for your email address, you may immediately create a fake address without disclosing your true email address.

A service called Abine Blur takes the concept of online identity concealment to a whole new level. It also enables you to make your credit card numbers appear different for every transaction in addition to masking your email address. You enter the card's details together with the exact amount of the transaction, preventing the dishonest retailer from overcharging you or using your card again. You may even have a phone conversation without giving up your actual number thanks to it.