I need to send a secured email, how do I do that?

  • Thread starter Thread starter HR1
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HR1

I need to send an email that only the user can open, does anyone know how to
do that? Thanks!
 
Send the content as a password protected zip-file and contact the person by
different means to inform him/her about the password you used.
 
HR1 said:
I need to send an email that only the user can open, does anyone know how to
do that? Thanks!

Have the recipient of your e-mail send you their own e-mail but have it
digitally signed. Then save that sender in your contacts list. When you
want to send that person an encrypted e-mail, use the contact that you saved
which will also have stored the public half of their encryption key. Then
when they receive your encrypted e-mail, they can use the private half of
their key (which only they have) to decrypt your message.

Encryption is by invite. Someone sends you a digitally signed e-mail
because they are allowing you to later use the public key contained within
to encrypt your e-mails. That person doles out the same public key to
everyone to whom they send a digitally signed e-mail. None of them can read
the encrypted e-mail because each only has half the key (the public half).
Only that person has the private half of the key that allows decrypting the
message.

So to send an encrypted e-mail means you use the public key that the
recipient gave you earlier in their digitally signed message. Getting
e-mail certificates used to be free from Thawte but they got acquired by
Verisign and after a couple of years discontinued their free service (and
all free certs they had so far issued were made to expire a month after they
stopped their free service except for those users that logged into their
Thawte accounts to update their cert for one more year but most Thawte users
never got a notification e-mail about the discontinued service). Comodo
still doles out free e-mail certs so have your other party get one, install
it in their certificate store (which their e-mail client can use), and send
you a digitally signed message. Then you can send them back a protected
message that got encrypted using the public half of their key.
 
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