Email Encryption - Failure to Launch?

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For most users using the build in encryption capabilities of Outlook and other popular email clients is just too hard. Not to mention the fact that getting a certificate is in itself a problem. There are a number of solutions that makes email encryption easier for the mass market. One of these products is Izemail. It’s free to use, S/MIME compatible, supports various email clients, supports smartcards and USB tokens and a free email certificate is included. http://www.izecom.com/download/EN/download_izemail.html

There are also services like Hushmail. I think they support PGP but I do know that any email sent to another hushmail subscriber is encrypted. The fairly view times I need that service I had my client get a free account at hushmail

"view times I need "
err, "...fairly FEW times I NEEDED..."
NEED COFFEE........

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Thawte (a versign company) has free personal email certificates which work great in Outlook and Outlook Express. They also work well in Apple's Mail application. Actually I have to say the mail makes signing and encrpting messages a breeze.

Here is a link to the Thwate page:

http://www.thawte.com/secure-email/personal-email-certificates/index.html

I am in no way affilitated with Verisign other than I have used a number of their certificates both free and paid for.

Thanks

Luke

Good info. I signed up for one to experimient with it, and it's a fine approach for applications that support it. Sadly it is not compatible with the GPG approach, but Thunderbird at least understands it when it's recieved.

I agree that good email encryption options are sparce for Outlook users. Man, GPG and PGP are just beyond me, too difficult to setup and manage and share. I'll share my story. I just a need a "Good enough" solution: I'm not a terrorist or a spy. As a small businessman, I just wanted a cheap, quick and easy solution. I had tried a bunch, but I just bought the new MessageLock application. It's a symetric key product, no "special reader" is required by the receiver. I just type in a password and go. Authentication isn't that important to me, but then again, for my use if an email comes in encrypted, thats good enough for me. The url for a MessageLock trial is www.encryptomatic.com. I think messagelock.com also works.
Keep it up,

Ever tried Secured eMail www.securedemail.com

There is also GHOSTPHRASE that works with almost any email client, including Outlook. You can send from Outlook and receive with gmail, or vice versa. Very safe, and very easy to use.
www.ghostphrase.com

From what I've seen on the internet, a lot of the talk about GPG is aimed at people using the command-line interface. As long as this is portrayed as the standard way of using GPG, then it will never take off outside of determined technical people (that was partly why Windows 95 was so popular - people could point-and-click to do things, without having to go anywhere near a daunting command-prompt!).

I have been using GPG for a couple of months and haven't even seen the command-line interface. I downloaded GPG4Win (http://www.gpg4win.org/) and FireGPG (http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/). From GPG4Win, I use Windows Privacy Tray (to manage my keys) and GPGee (to sign etc files by right-clicking on them and choosing the option from the context-menu). I use FireGPG with FireFox to sign text-boxes before submitting them (this will work with Hotmail etc as well) - just right-click in the box, select FireGPG then the required function). FireGPG also integrates tightly with GMail - automatically telling you if a signature is valid and putting buttons on the interface for signing etc. There are a couple of bugs with FireGPG, but nothing that I haven't been able to workaround so far.

I believe it is this easy-to-use image that needs spreading. A few well-developed tools can give you all the (point-and-click) functionality you require.

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