Asking questions about email

The 2 major players are Outlook and Thunderbird. I used them both; Outlook for work (all hail Exchange!) and Thunderbird at home.

Both have the ability to download the mail at receiving the mail, so you can look and work with it even without an active internet connection.

Encryption is the magic. There are a lot of tutorials on the internet, just google it.

Email in general, encryption or something else?

They do seem like the 2 major players. I know people who use one or the other. I can check out how they have been using them.

I've tried to tinker with both, but Microsoft seems to made themselves incompatible with other clients and even with their own older products. I find it difficult to load my old emails into their newest email program. I may have to reject Microsoft on those grounds.



Ok. I'll go look that stuff up later. Should I search email encryption, just plain encryption, or something else?



*DivineWrath is a little bit annoyed that you can't make nested quotes on these forums...

In regards to that question I asked, I was leaving it open ended so anyone could provide information. However, there is something I could use a little bit information about.

I don't know much about email servers, availability and such (is that what they are called). My current email address was kinda setup over 10 years ago by someone else, and I had little involvement in setting things up. I try copy over settings instead of setting things up manually. I'm not sure how to go about looking for alternatives, or what I should be looking for.

Actually I'm surprised I haven't given this much thought. I kinda assumed that Microsoft, Hotmail (now owned by Microsoft if I recall correctly), and Google were the major players. I should do some searching on this. I should also look into how some of these companies or other websites seems to have their own special email addresses (like [email protected] ).

Anyone with their own domain can have their own addresses. Most web hosting resellers also include mail servers as part of the service, though larger companies will typically host their own infrastructure (often using Exchange).

For personal use though, if you are only interested in email, a domain can be had for several bucks a year and shared hosting for several bucks a month (you'll generally want to avoid 'email hosting' as those deals normally restrict you from actually taking full advantage of the benefits, like catch-all addresses).

 

One thing about google or hotmail is they read all your mail, and use it to tailor ads. If you register a DNS like stardock.com, you can create a mail server as well. The only way, I would say to have your email secure is using your own servers, other than that, your hosting company stores it all and anyone there has access and can share it at will.

No encryption is unbreakable, if anything, I wouldn't put it past the NSA to use a shell company to distribute these so called 'secure' emailings, if I were a goose stepping snoop, those would be the 1st I want to see. Back in 2009 or 2010, people were all the rage over the NSA helping MS with security tomshardware.com/news/NSA-Windows-Microsoft-Security-OS,9118.html and I warned people over and over, even in this forum I was ridiculed for warning people, the old 'tin foil hat nut case' again.

Passwords are your biggest friend with email programs, if a hacker wants in, they typically try the old standbys like pets name, kids name or birthday. If they really want in, they will try to get you to install a keylogger with a malicious exe or something.

Just remember, nothing you send electronically is ever really secure.

 

http://vpncreative.net/evidence-shows-that-microsoft-complied-with-nsa-to-grant-access-to-encrypted-messages-files/ 

Also, if you want to stop a load of junk mail when you open a new email account, never put or address out in public like, send me that  file [email protected], you at least want to do something like myfist0 at hellmail dot scom. No doubt they have bots to find those now as well though.

 

In theory.

The limiter is how much time and/or effort is worth the decrypting....;)

 

I think the more effort you put into encrypting, the more spooks you will attract... 

 

I can't help myself 

EDIT: This video cause 22 embassies to be closed recently 

Too true.

Back in WW2 ... when my old man was intercepting enemy communications he had to laugh when the 'Jerries' couldn't help themselves but to end trans with 'H H' [morse, BTW]....;p

Kinda took the guesswork outa who you were listening to...;)

I haven't entirely forgotten about this thread. I've been a bit preoccupied, so hence the lack of responses from me. I've since managed to setup a new email address for the purposes of running these tests (I do not wish to risk losing important emails if something goes wrong). I ran into some troubles with Thunderbird, but I've since fixed them. Apparently I needed to do a few things, not just one thing to get everything working (which wasn't obvious). I had no such problems with Microsoft Outlook though. It was able to determine problems with its setup wizard and give me options as to what I could do to make things work, instead of making me guess as to what I should do as what happened with Thunderbird.

However, I ran into trouble with importing old emails from other programs, and from saved file(s). I'm going to look into further options to fix these problems. I might try looking into add-ons that support what stuff I want to import. If I'm looking into an alternate email program, being to keep all my emails from over the past decade in a central location is something I'm looking for.

Now that things are setup so that I can send and receive emails for those 2 programs, I'm going to be running a series of tests to see if there are any notable differences in how the different programs handle email.

Encryption is becoming a SOP business requirement for many situations so I'm not sure simply using it enlarges your 'radar signature' all that much.

Looks like everybody's already on the radar anyway.

I have to enable whole-drive encryption on my computers by the end of September (at least all that contain any PHI - protected health information) thanks to the 'Affordable' Care Act.  And encrypt the backup drives, etc.  Not that that's a bad thing.  Just a sign of the times.