How to make your email more private
We’ve told you why privacy is important and we’ve told you why you should care about your privacy and the privacy of your email. But how can you actually make your email more private?
Method 1: Encryption
First of all, what is encryption? Encryption is a method of making messages and files unreadable for people who are not meant to see them. Encryption turns ‘normal’ readable text (plaintext) into unreadable text (ciphertext).
With encryption you can encrypt a message so it’s not readable for anyone, except for the person that is meant to read it. But can you encrypt your own emails?
First you have to make your own keypair. This pair contains one public key that is, as the name suggests, public, and one private key that only you have. There are certain encryption apps that make this easy to do. For example Mailvelope, this app allows you to create your own keypair, search for other peoples’ public keys and it helps you to encrypt and decrypt messages.
When you’ve encrypted your emails, the information in them is safe and private.
Method 2: No forwarding
Even though encryption is one of the most effective ways to make your email private, it’s a pretty complicated method. There are easier methods like not forwarding mails if it’s not really necesary. By forwarding emails you lose control over who can and can’t see it. To keep information private, it’s important to keep control over your information.
Method 3: Setting expiration dates
Like mentioned before, it’s important to stay in control. Another way to do this is by setting expiration dates on your messages. This method is not as secure as encryption because the receiver(s) can forward the mail or save it on their own device, but it’s still safer than doing nothing.
Method 4: Switching to a privacy friendly email service
Another, easier method is choosing a different email service. Email services like Gmail are not private, but most people still use them because they’re free and because they’re easy to use. But when you’re not prepared to pay for email using your data as currency, you could consider actually paying for an email service that doesn’t use your data for commercial purposes.
I hope this list is able to help you to keep your emails private!
