Email Encryption

If you don’t encrypt the data that you transmit via email, then you run the risk of having somebody else read what you sent. Data transmitted over the Internet are not private or secure, and these data can actually be stored in servers and unearthed again after a long time has passed. Thanks to email encryption, though, you can prevent this from happening.

Email encryption is a method of data compression that changes your files into a format that is inaccessible to unauthorized persons. This is done to make sure that confidential and sensitive data transmitted over the Internet will not be read by a third party. If you want to do more than just email encryption, you can also apply encryption to an entire volume or drive. To make use of the drive, you need a special decryption key. Once you have finished accessing files in the drive, it then returns to its encrypted state, making it unreadable by spyware, Trojan horses, or snoops.

Email encryption and other encryption schemes may be symmetric or asymmetric. Symmetric key algorithms include AES and DES, and Blowfish. These algorithms work with only one key that the sender and receiver share. This key serves to encrypt and decrypt text. Asymmetric encryption schemes, on the other hand, use a pair of keys, a public key, and a private key. The public key can be posted online so that senders can use this for email encryption. Once data have been encrypted, they can only be decrypted by the person who has the private key. Asymmetric email encryption is considered more secure because the decryption key may be kept private.

Despite the notion that emails are supposed to be private, there are instances when emails are read by other parties before it reaches the recipient. In fact, emails can even be saved on a backup system and can be read long after they have already been sent. To prevent confidential messages from being read by a third party, individuals can opt to use email encryption. Email encryption often makes use of public key encryption, which is a type of cipher that uses a pair of keys to encrypt and decrypt data.

Email encryption using public key encryption

The “key” used for email encryption is a small bit of text code that activates the associated algorithm to decode or encode messages. In public key encryption, two keys are produced by an encryption program and are linked to an email address or a name. The public key can be shared to friends and other people so that they can use it to encrypt messages that are meant for the owner of the key. Once the owner receives the encrypted text, he or she can then use the private key to decrypt it.

Why use public key encryption for email encryption

Email encryption done using public key encryption assures the users that their emails are secure. Although many individuals are likely to consider email encryption as an excessive way to maintain privacy, this is great for those who want to keep certain email correspondence private. Email encryption gives one the assurance that any stored emails on mail servers, as well as messages in transit, will all be unreadable to a third party.