Ever hear of something called the Enigma? It was a device used in WWII by enemy forces to transmit messages to each other in code so that we couldn't eavesdrop on their conversation.

The same thing happens today, and email is the medium. Whether or not you know it, every time you send an email it is read by several computers before it gets to your intended party. Any or all of these computers could copy, alter, or delete your message. Copying it and sending it along would succeed in making a record of everything you said without alerting either you or your intended party that anything amiss happened.

Every one of your emails could be on file somewhere waiting to come back to haunt you. So the question becomes: Who's reading your email? The answer is: Anyone who wants to. Now, is Bob the grocer reading your email? Probably not, but your boss might be, your ISP might be, and the government might be. Can you protect yourself? Yes, but it isn't easy.

What people can do is encrypt their email. Encrypting converts plain text into unintelligible forms by means of a cryptosystem. This however requires that you and the person you're writing to both have what is called the encryption key. It also means that every time you write an email you have to take steps to encrypt it, a bothersome and sometimes complicated process.

Software has recently been released to help you handle these problems and good email programs have built-in support for encryption. Microsoft Outlook now has support but other programs handle it better, as well as easier. This author recommends The Bat (www.ritlabs.com), a small powerful email client with powerful encryption and security features. You'll be able to handle setting it up yourself through basic instructions.

Published in 2002