E-mail Privacy Mythology

Many people believe that e-mail privacy is inherent and guaranteed, psychologically equating it with the postal system. E-mail systems were a crucial tool in creating the Internet, and actually predate the Internet in existence. While the ability to access your personal e-mail messages is secured with a password, this is insufficient to guarantee legitimate security. There are additional security considerations when using laptops to access e-mail systems.

Businesses are increasingly relying on electronic mail to correspond with clients and colleagues. As more people find the need to transmit sensitive information through the internet, the need for e-mail privacy becomes more apparent.

The e-mail message is perpetually exposed to unauthorized access as it travels along this unprotected Internet from the composer to the reader. If routers between the source and destination of an e-mail message are compromised, potentially any e-mail message passing through that router could be accessed.

Unencrypted e-mails should be regarded as postcard, in that anyone who receives it can read it. Intelligence agencies screen unencrypted e-mails with ease and conduct these screens regularly.

Some e-mail you may send and receive could be considered company property. It is unwise to associate personal e-mails of any kind with a company address.

When using laptop notebooks to send and receive e-mail, you may often be using someone else