IT’S time to face reality: Pursuing digital security should be as much of a no-brainer as locking your door before you leave the house. Identity theft, corporate security breaches and an increased interest in personal privacy are forcing some changes. Many of us are choosing stronger passwords and changing them more often, locking down social media accounts and being more conscious of how we communicate. If you haven’t taken these steps, you should. But one of our favorite forms of electronic communication — email — remains one of the hardest to secure. We are starting to see more and more companies using Office 365 email encryption when sending to us and we are unable to get the messages. They come into our inboxes with an attachment called message.html. Thanks to a renewed focus on privacy and security, however, new tools are arriving regularly that should make it easier to encrypt email. One promising new encryption tool is Virtru, a feature that can be added to Chrome and Firefox browsers or installed on the Mail program on the Mac and for Outlook on Windows. Security experts say email is a lot more like a postcard than a letter inside an envelope, and almost anyone can read it while the note is in transit. The government can probably read your email, as can hackers and your employer. What’s the solution? Make your email more like a letter inside an envelope. The best way to do this is with a process known as encryption, which scrambles a message into unreadable code that needs a key to be unlocked, providing a layer of protection if someone intercepts your email. The downside to encryption tools is that they are usually difficult to install and use. ![]() In addition, they require the person on the other end to be using the same tools. Thanks to a renewed focus on privacy and security, however, new tools are arriving regularly that should make it easier to encrypt email. One promising new encryption tool is Virtru, a feature that can be added to Chrome and Firefox browsers or installed on the Mail program on the Mac and for Outlook on Windows. One of Virtru’s big selling points is that it works with web-mail services like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. There are also apps for iOS and Android. Another big benefit of Virtru is that recipients don’t have to be using the service or any other encryption program to see your email. They receive an email that contains a link to your encrypted message. Once they click a button to verify their email address, they can read the unencrypted message in a separate web page and reply. Their responses won’t be encrypted unless they also use Virtru, but your original email won’t be included in the response, so it remains hidden from prying eyes. While Virtru is not a completely seamless experience, it is a walk in the park compared with some of the, which require signification coordination with the recipient of your messages. To install the browser plug-in, click the Get Virtru button on the and it will detect what browser you’re using. Click to download and the extension will install itself, all quickly and easily. You don’t even have to restart your browser. (The company says support for Internet Explorer and Safari is coming soon.) The next time you compose a new email, you’ll see a blue bar at the top of your email window with a little toggle button that lets you turn Virtru encryption on or off and access other options. Then, type your email normally and hit send. Any video converter ultimate for mac update extract error. Emails and attachments are encrypted on your computer or mobile device and decrypted on the other side — so-called end-to-end encryption, which means they can’t be read in transit and they can’t be decrypted without a key if they are intercepted. Next time, install AppKiller with 1-click. Learn how MacUpdate Desktop can install apps on MacUpdate with the simple click of the icon. Plus, keep all your apps updated. App killer for ipad. I particularly like that you can determine which emails you want to encrypt, case by case; and I like that it encrypts any type of attachment as well as normal email messages. Image Credit Minh Uong/The New York Times The service also adds control over your emails after you send them: you can disable forwarding, for example, and even set messages to expire after a certain period of time. You can also revoke access to an encrypted message so your recipient won’t be able to decrypt it in the future if the relationship goes sour. The methods aren’t foolproof; someone can obviously still take a screenshot of an email once it’s decrypted, or copy and paste the contents into a different file. And if your recipient writes back without encrypting the response, at least part of the conversation is not secure. Another drawback comes on mobile. You must use Virtru’s app to compose and send secure messages on your mobile device, since it doesn’t work on other mail apps on the phone. And there is one other aspect about Virtru that might make some people leery of the service: One of the company’s founders, Will Ackerly, was a security engineer for the National Security Agency, the government agency that is said to intercept many forms of digital communications. Virtru promotes his background as a benefit. And John Ackerly, Mr.
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