Email options - best for privacy?

[Caveat]

Much has been said about gmail's privacy policy in that they scan the contents of any/all emails sent in order to add relevant advertising. So basically, anything you send can be read. Furthermore they may keep details of deleted emails (residual) for up to 60 days.

With this in mind, does anyone know of any email service that would be more suitable for sending sensitive information, privately?

 

[ney001]

You could enquire about something like this
http://www.hushmail.com/services/hushmail/

However if it is really sensitive you could set up a gmail account and create emails etc but save them to draft. Person you want to send information to could also have the password and then retrieve the information from the draft folder. That way email was never sent by anyone - I seem to remember reading that some Al Qaeda cells operated using this method!

 

[Caveat]

Thanks ney - had a look at hushmail and I'm struggling a bit to see the real benefit TBH - their terms and conditions would suggest that you agree to them checking out your mails too - although it doesn't explicitly say that.

The point about the drafts is ingenious BTW

 

[ney001]

As far as I would think the draft will be stored online but to access it you would have to hack into the email account itself, for this to happen you would have to be aware of what was in the account in the first place i.e be targeting a specific account/person. When something is sent/received it has been logged at various servers along the way so could be flagged by pure chance!

Caveat - have you considered this?

[broken link removed]

 

[patftrears]

Thanks ney - had a look at hushmail and I'm struggling a bit to see the real benefit TBH - their terms and conditions would suggest that you agree to them checking out your mails too - although it doesn't explicitly say that.

The point about the drafts is ingenious BTW

Where does it say that in the terms and conditions ?

Hushmail is end to end encryption, only the sender and receiver can see the email.
Both need hushmail accounts.

 

[JoeB]

What about encrypting your emails yourself, using a public and private key system like Pretty Good Privacy.

You probably can't encrypt the emails themselves, you'd have to attach an encrypted document. This would be the only secure way I'd imagine.. although Hush Mail sounds pretty good too.

Or even zip or .rar the file,, using a password, this is less secure than Pretty Good Privacy I think..

 

[boskonay]

The only way to ensure privacy is to run your own mail server, and employ encryption.

 

[Caveat]

Thanks all.

Enough info there anyway. Probably a bit of paranoia/overkill on my part it has to be said!