E-mail

Electronic mail, abbreviated e-mail or email, is a method of composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. The term e-mail applies both to the Internet e-mail system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and to workgroup collaboration systems allowing users within one company or organization to send messages to each other. Often workgroup collaboration systems natively use non-standard protocols but have some form of gateway to allow them to send and receive internet e-mail. Some organizations may use the internet protocols for internal e-mail service.

Privacy problems regarding e-mail

E-mail privacy, without some security precautions, can be compromised because

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• e-mail messages are generally not encrypted;
• e-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to intercept and read messages;
• many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of your email messages on their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain up to several months on their server, even if you delete them in your mailbox.

There are cryptography applications that can serve as a remedy to the above, such as Virtual Private Networks, message encryption using PGP or the GNU Privacy Guard, encrypted communications with the e-mail servers using Transport Layer Security and Secure Sockets Layer, and/or encrypted authentication schemes such as Simple Authentication and Security Layer.

Related Topics:
Cryptography - Virtual Private Network - PGP - GNU Privacy Guard - Transport Layer Security - Simple Authentication and Security Layer

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