Do you often find yourself wanting to send sensitive or confidential emails? Perhaps you need to work with someone on a real estate transaction or have important business documents to send to the client but you don’t want everyone on your team to see that information. If so, it might be time to consider signing up for an email encryption service like Hushmail, which will allow you to send sensitive emails that the recipient can only open with the right key. Here are five steps to sending confidential emails in Gmail using Hushmail.
Here are 5 Creative ways to Send Confidential Emails in Gmail
1) Choose the right email address
Your business or professional email address is a critical part of your digital reputation. Whether you’re using Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or another service, make sure it reflects your brand.
For example, if you run a shoe store, a name like [email protected] would work well. A personal gmail would be less effective because it doesn’t represent anything specific about your business.
Suppose you can use an @ sign in your email address that’s even better because those addresses are more memorable and recognizable as business accounts (as opposed to personal emails). You should also ensure that your contact information is accurate and up-to-date across all your online profiles and wherever else you appear online.
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2) Encrypt emails with PGP
PGP encryption is one of several cryptosystems that allow you to ensure your emails aren’t being read by anyone except for their intended recipient.
There are a few different options for setting up PGP, but they involve installing a special kind of plugin into your email client and distributing one or more public encryption keys.
In essence, these public keys act as unique digital addresses—you give a copy of your key to anyone who wants to send you an encrypted email and they can encrypt messages using it.
They then send those messages along as normal, but when they reach you on Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail or wherever else you use Google’s IMAP service (which is nearly all of them), they’ll be decrypted automatically.
3) Use an encrypted email service
Did you know that Google is capable of snooping on your email? As it turns out, Gmail’s terms of service allows them to read emails if they suspect activities such as spam, fraud, or phishing.
Google isn’t alone — Yahoo Mail and Hotmail also have similar policies. In fact, many popular email services allow their employees access to private messages.
If you need a method for sending confidential emails that doesn’t use your personal account, consider using an encrypted email service like Hushmail. Hushmail keeps no logs and doesn’t store users’ passwords—it can’t even tell when someone has logged into an account.
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4) Send emails from a computer, not a phone
You may be able to send confidential email from your phone, but it’s generally not a good idea. For one thing, it may end up being an open secret that you were carrying around a sensitive message on your device—and that information could eventually fall into dangerous hands.
Instead, send emails from a secure computer (or laptop) through an encrypted Wi-Fi connection—that way you can be reasonably sure that even if somebody intercepts your message, they won’t know who sent it or how to get back in touch with you.
Also consider avoiding obvious words like confidential and sensitive, which can raise red flags for automated spam filters.
5) Encrypt your inbox, not just emails
For added security, Google also lets you encrypt your entire inbox. This means that anyone—even those with access to your emails or computer—wouldn’t be able to read them. It’s not perfect, as there are ways around it, but it’s better than nothing.
To encrypt your email, log into your account and select Settings. Click on Sign-in & Security, followed by Encryption.
Final Thought
In cases like identity theft, a person’s online reputation is of utmost importance as it can take years for them to salvage their name and good standing once hackers have compromised their personal information.
The most important lesson here is that you must take time when sending any email, even those meant for a small audience. As soon as others see it, it could leave an indelible mark on your or your company’s image.
If you are unsure if they can trust you based on what they’ve read about you, they will move along with another more trustworthy candidate.