Email is everything today. Without email, an android phone can’t be used. Businesses run smoother with the help of email. If it is also important for you, you need to know how to secure an email. There are many answers to the question about how to secure your email. Some of them are easy while others are more complicated. You must be smarter to protect your email from hackers.
Understanding how to secure an email in Outlook is extremely required, especially if your emails contain crucial details like social security numbers, identity attributes, and so on. It is good to learn low technology way to secure your email address whether it is on iPhone or on android. If you can also learn the high technology way, that’s even better.
Why Do I Need to Secure My Email Account?
One easy way is securing your email with a password, not the easy one. Make sure you make a password that involves numbers and letters. Your email password should not spell phrase or word that’s recognizable even by your closest friends. Combination of lowercase and capital, the usage of symbols and punctuations are going to make your email totally secured.
Keep this in your mind: your strong password can even be hacked. How come? A hacker can just hit that ‘Forgot Password’ button. Then he’ll some easy questions they can answer easily. Make sure you don’t use simple information like your hometown, pet name, or birth date for the answers to security questions. If he knows the answer, he’ll access the email easily no matter how strong the password is.
How to Send Secure Email through Outlook
There are secure email services you can use to secure your email. One of them is SSL or Secure Socket Layers. It is an industry-standard that creates a link that’s encrypted between browser and web server. This service is going to prevent hackers to tap info from your networks. The web address that’s started with ‘HTTPS’ is better than ones started with ‘HTTP’ since the first one has SSL encryption.
One thing you have to know about using the SSL is that the mail server will save the message you send in plain text. It means everyone who can access the server of mail will see your message’s content even though he cannot tap into the network. Another option to secure your email address is by encrypting the message. How does it work?
If using secure and private email service is impossible, you still can make your emails safe and secure. It is by encrypting your messages. Encrypted messages can be read by anyone else, but your message recipients. At least there are two popular forms of message encryption. The first one is Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions or S/MIME and another one is Open PGP.
Both encryptions require your contacts and yourself to complement your computers with security certificates. They also require your contacts and yourself to exchange the character’s strings that are called the public keys.
How to Secure an Email Account
So you have created an extra-strong password for your email, what now? As mentioned before, a strong password is nothing if a hacker knows your personal info. So prepare tough security questions that cannot be answered by a hacker. Some sites make you chose security questions from the list while the others let you choose the question you want.
If you can make security questions yourself, make sure the answer is the detail about you that cannot be guessed easily, even by your life partner. If the hacker thinks he knows you, but then he cannot answer the question, you win. Unfortunately, not all the entire sites let you make your own security question. If you have to choose one between those security questions, prepare a strong answer.
It means, uses false information for the answer. For example, you can change your birth date. Or you may want to choose the city you want to visit as your birthplace. Remember that you must not forget the answers. Write them down or keep them safe in your memory so you won’t have to work hard if one day you forget your own email password.
How to Know If an Email Address Is Secure
So you’ve done preparing your email messages, now you might be wondering how to send secure email Gmail to a secure address. If you’re sending the email from Gmail, compose the email first. Then enter the recipients of your messages. Now, check the email address of recipients then try to find No TLS. If you can find No TLS icon, your message might not be encrypted.
You shouldn’t send confidential attachments like contracts or tax forms to that email address. When you receive emails, always look for the same No TLS icons and make sure you don’t find them. If the new emails you receive got No TLS icon next to the sender’s name, the emails from that sender aren’t encrypted. Tell your contacts to send encrypted emails. How to do that?
TLS can only work if both recipient’s and sender’s email provider is using the TLS. TLS won’t work if only your email provider uses this service while your recipient’s email provider doesn’t have the service. How does TLS secure the emails? TLS or Transport Layer Security is standard email protection set by NIST or the National Institute of Standard and Technology.
When TLS is used by email service of both recipient and sender, the messages will be secured during the transit, or on the way. But some email providers aren’t able to receive the encrypted message. As a result, the message that’s sent in clear text can be read by anyone. The survey said, only eighty percent of emails are using TLS. This means hackers can steal two of ten emails.
You absolutely need to understand how to secure an email then apply it to your email messages. Whether it is Office 365 Outlook, Yahoo, or Gmail, make sure that you know how to protect your account and how to send encrypted emails. Don’t give a chance to any hacker to steal your precious data.
