Security Tips 10 tips for Email Security Protection

Ensuring email security is not just as simple as setting a strong password for your POP or IMAP email server. For email security protection, the most important thing is to ensure that you do not put a stone on your feet. The tips provided in this article allow you to avoid making any type of errors.
On the Internet, there is a lot of information about how to protect your email. However, most of them are used at the Professional level and are not suitable for common end users. After all, SpamAssassin and other spam filters are configured to create an encrypted verified email server and manage no connection between the email gateway virus scanner and end users.

For end users, their email security usually involves a separate email client or email user proxy. For example, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Mutt client tools. Except for a few Email users who do not use a specific client application tool, most people need information on how to ensure the security of these applications.

The following security tips apply to all types of Email users, not just those who use specific applications. The first five items are arranged in the order of use, and can be processed step by step from simplicity to difficulty. In this way, after processing the easy part, you can enter the following part. The following five examples are effective measures recognized in practice, which can help you avoid making wrong decisions.

#1: do not enable all supported functions in HTML or XHTML format on the email client without careful analysis.

In most cases, if you are using an email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, you can choose to use an HTML file for your email, you should set the configuration to use the basic HTML format instead of the "original" HTML format. Of course, the best way is to set the configuration to only support plain text files. Using HTML format poses a security risk. You are identified as a valid recipient by spam and obtained personal information by malicious tools and identity thieves. My personal choice is to use the user mail proxy tool. HTML format is not supported, and all mail information is displayed in plain text format.

#2: If personal data is very important to you, use the local POP3 or IMAP client to receive an email.

If you want to keep your email confidential, you should avoid using network-based email services such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail. Even if the email service provider's policy does not seem to cause information leakage, it does not mean that their employees will not break the rules. Some email service providers are accused of selling email addresses to spam "partners. Even a completely-oriented network mailbox service such as Hushmail is not as secure as a local email.

#3: even if the email itself is not encrypted, ensure that the identity authentication process of the email is encrypted.

The reason for this is actually very simple: you do not want to have a malicious security tool on the mail server to monitor the identity verification process of the mail. If someone does this, they can send emails as you are and receive emails that you should have seen, causing various problems (including spam ). Contact your internet service provider to determine whether the verification process is encrypted and how it is encrypted (to help you determine the difficulty of the encryption solution used for cracking ).

#4: Add a digital signature to the email.

Generally, as long as you follow the email security guidelines, it is basically impossible for others to obtain your email, but this is not completely absolute. Therefore, you can use encryption tools such as PGP or GnuPG to add digital signatures to emails. In this way, only recipients with public keys can see the content of emails without private keys, no one can obtain relevant information. Therefore, this is a good protection measure.

#5: Avoid using unencrypted networks.

If, for some reason, you must communicate with an unauthenticated email account through an encrypted connection, do not use the public or other unencrypted network to access the account. Please remember that it will not work under any circumstances.

Pay attention to the virtual environment and the actual environment during email communication. Be vigilant. Do not trust anyone who has not gained Trust, understand potential risks, and the possible consequences of such trust.

Email Security is not only related to itself; if the email account is damaged, it will also affect others. Even if your email account is not damaged, your computer may be adversely affected by improper email processing.

#6: Disable the automatic email address processing function.

Due to the increasing number of automatic processing functions in the software, we will see more and more security events caused by accidental selection of wrong recipients. The "terrible auto-Fill function" in Microsoft Outlook is an obvious example. When using the drop-down list, it is easy to accidentally select the recipient near the actual recipient. When discussing sensitive information such as trade secrets, such operations can easily lead to various security events.

#7: The BCC setting is used to send emails to multiple users.

From a security perspective, it is a bad practice to share an email address with someone you do not need to know. It is also impolite to share an email address with a stranger without permission. When sending an email TO multiple people, you can select the recipient (TO) or CC mode. In this case, all recipients can share all their email addresses. If you do not explicitly confirm that the email address should be shared by all recipients, use BCC settings. In this way, the recipient will not know that there are other recipients.

#8: only save emails in a safe place.

Encrypted transmission of email will effectively protect the security of information, and emails that are received and decrypted and saved as plain text files may be obtained by other users in the system, the Sarah Palin incident shows that the web mail service provider is not good at this protection and cannot guarantee that the privacy of the stored emails will not be leaked, in addition, the commonly used Microsoft Windows system supports sharing of CIFS in the general Network File System, and the password is ineffective.

#9: Use a private email only.

Any email address you share will be noticed by spammers, whether sending an email or using the address of the email title. More spam senders and phishing attackers will use, impersonate the blacklist used by the spam interceptor of the network service provider or the system administrator of the lazy email server to defraud the email address from you.

#10: the recipient must be carefully checked every time the email is sent, especially when the email list is sent.

When I replied to the email list, I accidentally replied to a separate sender, which is not a big security issue. It may cause some inconvenience, but you may not even notice that your email is in the mail list. On the contrary, if you send an email to a specific individual through the mail list, there will be real security problems. In the end, there will be many terrible consequences, and almost no one will know, Because you accidentally disclose secrets to hundreds of people you don't even know.