A big part of your online life revolves around your email address. It acts as a central hub for almost everything you do: Travel documents and tours arrive there, it is home to receipts for all your Amazon purchases, it acts as a recovery mechanism for the pages and apps you sign up for and then you forget login details. And, of course, there are all the emails you send.
WIRED UK
This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.
Your inbox contains a lot of private information – and in many cases secrets – that together you can build a profile of your interests, movements and social connections. But email privacy can often be ignored. The threats you face depend on who you are. For businesses, phishing attacks launched through email can lead to entire business networks being compromised. But for individuals, there are privacy concerns then working out if your account has been hacked.
First data collection. While Gmail does not scan the contents of your emails to collect information for its advertising machines, data from your Google Account is used to serve ads in your Gmail inbox. (Most recently, Google started placing store ads in your inbox.)
Google may also use some information in your inbox to assist with other services it provides. For example, flight bookings can be automatically added to your calendar; Local maps for areas you travel to, based on hotel bookings, can be downloaded to your phone. They are potentially time-saving and useful tools, but some people may not be comfortable with how your email data is used for other purposes. In addition to Google’s data collection, you may not want to publish your email to any app or service you sign up for, especially those that may be for single use.
The other issue that individuals need to think about is how secure email is – and whether it is strong enough for their needs. For most people, security protection provided by the major email providers – Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail – requires more than enough protection for emails. Account access can be further protected with two-factor authentication, including security keys.
Alternatively, you might want to consider a completely different email account that puts privacy first and uses end-to-end encryption where possible. This is especially true if you want to send confidential information or send emails that cannot be linked to your identity.
Go to Privacy first
If you want to move all your emails to a more private service, then you have a few options. The biggest thing to consider before making a decision is that there will be ramifications – and digital admin will be required.
For your most sensitive online accounts – from banking and shopping to social media – you want to log in and change the email address associated with your account. Identify the most important accounts for you before you switch and weigh all your options. But it is best not to delete your old account. For those online accounts that do not contain as much sensitive information, you may be able to forward your old email to your new one. When it comes to opening a new account, there are privacy and security-oriented email providers out there. We have chosen two here that are worth it to be worth.
Based in Switzerland, ProtonMail is protected by some of the strictest privacy laws in the world. In addition, it has a bunch of security features designed to keep your email and identity private. The company says its emails are end-to-end encrypted, with the company unable to access user data. “Data is encrypted on the client side using an encryption key that we do not have access to,” it states on its website.
In addition to end-to-end encryption, ProtonMail does not require any personal information to create a new account, including IP logs. It has also made all its code open source so that anyone on the web can inspect for coding errors as well as vulnerabilities. There is a free option, which only comes with 500 MB of storage, but also paid options that include more features and start at € 4 per month.
.
