Emails and text messages are two of the most popular forms of communication. The following article will describe two software products that greatly secure these methods of communication in a very user friendly fashion.
Protonmail
Protonmail is an email service that has a lot of the same look and feel that Gmail offers. The major difference between Protonmail and Gmail is that Protonmail has much higher levels of privacy than Gmail does.
Protonmail stores every email on their servers in an encrypted format that allows no one other than you to read your emails. In addition to that, Protonmail has greatly simplified the process of exchanging encrypted emails with another individual. For anyone that has used PGP email encryption, you probably know that setting that up is beyond the capabilities of the typical user.
Protonmail Benefits:
- End to End Encryption between Protonmail users (or any advanced PGP users on another email platform)
- Encrypted Email Storage
- Send Encrypted emails to any email
Gmail Benefits:
- Great shareable calendar integration
- Lots of storage for free
- Filters emails into categories automatically
What exactly does end to end encryption mean? This means that no one other than the sender and the recipient can read your email. Why this is not the standard for every email platform is beyond me.
Encrypted email storage gives you the piece of mind that your emails cannot be read by anyone associated with the administration of the email servers or any third party software development teams that are given access without your knowledge or consent (perhaps, you could argue that they have your consent since you agreed to the lengthy terms and conditions to use the service).
One of the neatest features of Protonmail is the ability to send encrypted emails that are password protected to any email of your choice. This allows you to send potentially confidential information to someone that does not have a secure method in place to receive the information. For example, your insurance agent requests personal identifiable information from you to setup your account over an unencrypted email service.
Now on to Signal...
Signal is a messaging app that works with Android and iOS devices to securely send your messages to the appropriate party by utilizing an end to end encryption technique to keep prying eyes from reading your messages. Again, why encrypted communication is not the standard form of communication for everyone is a little baffling to me. Whether you have something to hide or not, why would you want to send messages to someone that anyone could intercept and read when you have the option to send all messages securely?
Also like Protonmail, the great thing about Signal is that their team has made the whole encryption process so easy that the average user would not even be able to tell that the application is any different from a standard SMS platform. In addition to ease of use, the mobile application has a great interface and incorporates all of the fun things like an expansive emoji set and GIFs galore. So many security applications have stripped all of the fun features out of them to the point where no one wants to use them for everyday communication. Signal also has a desktop messaging application that you can use in addition to the mobile application.
Closing Remarks
Securing your everyday communication is a great step that I believe everyone should take. Hit me up at jeff [at] jeffpettyjohn [dot] com if you have any questions or comments!
Stay awesome, everyone! :)