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Email encryption made easy
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: May 29, 2015
See Citizenfour yet? Worth getting HBO just to see it (and Going Clear).
If you recall, I wrote about the dark web technology that Glenn Greenwald and the team used to communicate with Edward Snowden during the time that Citizenfour was being filmed. In fact, much of the plot of the opening of the film involved the use of encrypted emails through the Tor-based dark web.
Most people don’t want to bother with the dark web. But, at this point, encrypted email is a thing to look at. What to do?
Modern times are here to help you. With some recent products, you no longer have to go the Tor route to encrypt your emails, and you don’t have to learn to program to do so, either.
Why encrypt? Well, if you are in the legal profession, encryption makes it harder for people to steal your confidential information. This is now even more important since the Ohio rules were updated recently to make privacy through electronic communications a requisite for professional behavior.
Going private also keeps the Googles and Yahoos of the world from raking your emails for the information they need to bombard you with ads.
PC Magazine recently took a look at the product StartMail, rating it “Excellent.” The product comes from the people who developed the StartPage private search engine.
Without getting into too much technical detail, here are some product highlights:
StartMail allows unlimited numbers of email, ten alternative account names, 10 gigs of storage, and two other, somewhat limited user accounts. Alias accounts let you communicate without displaying your actual email account.
The product can be configured to run in conjunction with your regular IMAP email account, or on its own.
The folks at SmartMail never see your unencrypted messages, so they can’t comply with discovery orders.
SmartMail makes creating a public and private key (password) very easy, definitely a bonus.
StartMail runs about $60 a year, and offers a one-week, limited trial subscription.
There are also other, similar products available, so please check them all out before you go with one of them, but, at this point, lawyers really should be encrypting all of their emails.
Other encrypted email products to look at include Abine Blur, Enlocked, and Send.Pro.