how about something simple for us non-techies? What non-google email is secure?
How much is secure?
Security is a bit of a continuum, so the question is how secure is your definition of secure? Free services have to make their money through selling services to someone else, and usually that service is either access to your eyeballs or your information.
Services you pay for, get their money from you - so should be more secure.
Email, by definition, isn't secure
Bottom line - No email is completely secure - email is like a postcard and can be read by anyone who has access to a server as it hops it's way through the internet.
Securing your mailbox - the rich man's approach
But as for a totally secure webmail mailbox, the only one that you can be sure about is one that lives on your own server.
Since few of us have the time or inclination to actually run our own server, you can rent virtual machines on the internet and set up accounts on them.
It gets a bit pricey though - servint charges about $50 per month to give you your own private server (http://www.servint.net/vps.php).
Securing your mailbox - the poor man's approach
A little less expensive route is to purchase a domain from a domain registrar such as web.com or godaddy.com and then use their hosting service. No true guarantee that they won't snoop though.
The catch
If you pay for it, you usually have to give a credit card, so your real identity is married to the account. Also, if your info is on someone else's machine then it is accessible to them and whoever they choose to share it with. The route I choose is to set up a free Yahoo account with a fake name, and that is good enough for me. Yahoo share away! I even share my yahoo messenger link in this forum. Yahoo could still check my IP and cross reference it to my logging into Flickr (which they own) with my regular name though. It really is a question of how much tin-foil you want to wrap around your head.
I use a separate browser for mongering sites, forums, searching, messaging and email. It is not bullet proof by any means, but I do notice the ads I get served up when logged in as yazoo are Thai Sweethearts, Fillipina kisses etc, but when logged in as my real identity I get financial and travel ads, so I think it is a simple precaution that works OK. |
