STOP YOUR EMAILS BEING HACKED

With the rise of instant messaging, you might think email’s days are numbered. Far from it. According to industry analysts Statista, nearly 294bn emails were sent last year – a figure that’s predicted to increase to 350bn by 2023. But are your emails really secure? As we explain in this feature, that depends on which email service you use and how you set it up.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

• Send end-to-end encrypted emails
• Secure your email account with two-factor authentication
• Stop tracking pixels revealing when you read an email
• Use burner email accounts to prevent spam

When you need to send emails containing particularly sensitive information (such as bank details or legal documents), we recommend using end-to-end encryption (E2E). Here, we’ll explain how this technology works and tell you about the powerful free email service that provides it.

If the idea of moving to a new email service doesn’t appeal, we also guide you through the steps you should take to secure your existing email account. Whichever service you use, there are plenty of ways to prevent hackers getting access to your inbox, including using randomly generated passwords and two-factor authentication.

Marketing companies are also keen to snoop on your email activity, and – as we reveal on page 56 – their methods are enough to leave you in a cold sweat. Follow our expert advice and you’ll be able to tweak your email account’s settings and put a stop to their privacybusting activities.

Finally, we explain how you can avoid your email account getting swamped with spam using ‘burner’ email accounts, which you can use once and discard. They’re perfect for those situations when you’d rather not provide your email address to a website or online service in order to download a file or read an article.

CREATE A SECURE AND ANONYMOUS EMAIL ACCOUNT

Which ever email service you use, it will almost certainly provide what’s known as ‘in transit’ encryption. Using TLS (transport layer security), this creates a secure tunnel between the server of your email provider and the recipient’s. It’s the same technology used by secure websites (those whose URL starts with ‘https’) to encrypt the data you send and receive while on the site. Emails delivered using TLS will be marked as such (as in this one sent by Netfix to our Gmail account, see screenshot right).

This means any emails you send from your account will be encrypted, keeping them safe from hackers while they’re travelling across the internet to their intended destination. Email sent to you by other people will be encrypted in the same way. However, this security only goes so far, as we will explain.

Who’s snooping on your email?

Encrypting email in transit is all well and good, but what happens when it arrives at its destination? inbox.