If you use Gmail’s mobile app on your cell phone or tablet, you may soon notice changes that will be of interest to anyone interested in personal privacy. It lets users put a self-destruct mechanism to conversations to “protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.” With Confidential Mode, users can set an expiration date to all emails, similar to a Snapchat message, and they can also revoke access to a confidential […]
TutaNota is a secure email service that focuses on security and privacy. Tutanota’s encrypted open source email app recently became available on F-Droid, making it the go-to secure email service that enables everybody to stop using Google. To date, no other email service has published their Android app on F-Droid, the number one platform for free and open source apps. NOTE: F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and […]
In a 351-66 vote, the House of Representatives passed a bill this week called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes the nation’s military and defense programs. Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS) used this opportunity to include as an amendment the Email Privacy Act, a piece of legislation long-favored by Electronic Frontier Foundation. If approved by the Senate and signed by the President, the new bill requires government agents to […]
The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulates how companies must handle personal data that they process. One requirement is to safeguard personal data from potential abuse. The GDPR highlights encryption as an appropriate technical measure to protect personal data. The new legislation states that encryption makes data unintelligible to any person who accesses the data in the case of a data breach. Luckily, the TutaNota email service has always […]
Word has been circulating in recent days that PGP has a major bug called Efail can can lead to encrypted emails being decrypted. Details about the problem have now been released and it seems the problem is not with PGP itself. It is with the way that some programmers implement PGP in their various email systems. PGP itself is not the problem. In fact, decrypting PGP-encrypted email messages with Efail […]
This sounds like a great tool for politicians and bureaucrats to illegally hide things from the public. However, on the bright side, it also will allow private citizens to hide things from politicians, bureaucrats, law enforcement officials, and hackers around the world. In short, a new update rolling out for Gmail offers a “self destruct” feature that allows users to send messages that expire after a set amount of time.
Are you using Gmail or Yahoo Mail or HotMail or Outlook.com or some other free email service hosted on the site of some multi-billion dollar corporation? If so, your email messages are being monitored and your personal information is available to corporations, governments, and other spies. In fact, Google admits that they do read (by means of automated software) all the emails that you send or receive via Gmail—mostly to […]
