Privacy Blog

"Friends don’t let friends get spied on.' – Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation and longtime advocate of privacy in technology.

Email Security

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Tutanota Reminds Everyone that it has Always Been GDPR-Complaint as its Email Service Encrypts the Entire Mailbox Automatically

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 […]

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The Truth about PGP’s So-Called Email Bug: It Isn’t Much of a Problem

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 […]

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Gmail’s ‘Self Destruct’ Feature Will Probably be Used to Illegally Destroy Government Records

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.

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How to Switch to Encrypted Email: The Ultimate Guide to Everyday Email Encryption

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 […]

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Encrypted Email Service ProtonMail is Being Blocked in Turkey

I have written before about encrypted email provider Proton Mail. In fact, I used Proton Mail last week when I was in China as it was the only email service I could find that was not blocked by the Great Firewall of China. (I bet that changes soon!) Now the government of Turkey isn’t allowing its citizens access to the privacy-enabled email service. See https://protonmail.com/blog/turkey-online-censorship-bypass/ for the details, unless you […]

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Use Encipher.it to Quickly and Easily Encrypt Your E-mail Messages

Encipher.it is an amazing service. It secures your email messages and other data so that none of the bad guys can read it, it protects your work or personal files from identity thieves, it allows you to share confidential information easily with friends or co-workers, and it is available free of charge. What is there to dislike about Encipher.it? Encipher.it offers several methods of use. In its easiest-to-use form, simply […]

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You Absolutely Must Secure Your Home Router and You Probably Can’t

Your in-home router/modem may be the most insecure piece of hardware you own. Luckily, there is an easy fix although it isn’t cheap for many people: replace your present router’s internal software with a security-focused product, such as the free and open code, DD-WRT. The expense arises from the fact that most routers cannot easily replace the internal software. If you are one of the majority who owns a non-modifiable […]

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