Did you know that the email you send over the Internet is sent in plain text format? From the time you hit the send button until it reaches its destination, your email goes through several different servers. Anyone one of those servers could be a point at which someone could read your email.
How can you avoid someone looking at your email? Use email encryption. The most popular email encryption program is PGP but there are other options. The problem is most of us don't take privacy seriously and we think encrypting our emails would be too much of a hassle. It can be a hassle, but it doesn't have to be.
Hushmail.com gives free accounts and they encrypt all of your email on the fly. You don't even know it's happening. The catch is, with Hushmail the emails are only encrypted when you send them to people who have Hushmail.com accounts.
Why don't companies like Google and Yahoo build PGP right into their webmail offerings? It would be so easy to do, but they don't.
Even if you aren't doing anything illegal you should be using encryption. It is important that we all guard our privacy and keep prying eyes out of our email. I know that some people think they have nothing to hide, but they do. Keep your private business to yourself and don't leave yourself open to someone snooping. You never know how they will string little pieces of data together to use against you in some way. I'm hoping for the day when email encryption becomes standard and everyone takes privacy as seriously as I do.
Everyone should use PGP
