The Best Secure Email Services: Protection Combined with Convenience

Popular free email services are definitely handy but considering them secure is a misconception. Furthermore, people aren’t always willing to sacrifice security for convenience. Below is a lowdown on the top three secure email services that are worth their salt.

An email service is reliable enough from a security perspective as long as it meets a number of criteria. First and foremost, it needs to be protected against hacking and interception. Secondly, even the developers shouldn’t be able to access to it, which means the service should be entirely confidential. Thirdly, they shouldn’t collaborate with the government and law enforcement.

Unfortunately, none of this holds true for popular email services, such as Gmail, Yahoo!, or Microsoft. We can recall the cases where Google admitted in court to taking advantage of users’ emails for targeted advertising; Yahoo! created software for the NSA; and Microsoft helped the above-mentioned agency surveil Outlook, Skype, and Hotmail users.

In some countries, the constitutional provision about confidentiality and intactness of personal information seems to work the way it should, but specific laws related to data security and information technologies allow the court to request and obtain any information associated with a citizen’s professional activities.

What email services are the most reliable?

1. Today’s best-known secure email service is the Swiss ProtonMail and its VPN service. It complies with all the applicable requirements while boasting a user-friendly interface, supporting all web browsers and using end-to-end encryption. It means that every message is encrypted separately and only the user who has the key can read it. The service utilizes open-source cryptography, two-factor authentication, and provides applications for iOS and Android. The only downside is that ProtonMail reps request an additional email address to verify the user during sign-up, although they swear they won’t retain it. Hopefully, they carry through with that promise.

2. The super-simple free German service called Tutanota has been drawing our attention for quite a while now. The registration is fast and doesn’t require any additional details, although the verification process is time-consuming and may take up to 48 hours. The secrecy is attained by generating a unique password for every recipient that needs to be entered in a specific way. Essentially, it’s like end-to-end encryption. The body of a message includes a link leading to Tutanota website. If you follow it and enter your secret password there, you will access a web interface where you can read the email and reply if necessary. There is no option to create a message draft, though. Besides these benefits, Tutanota features minimalist design with no excessive self-praise à la “the first email service from CERN”. There are apps for smartphones, too.

3. One more service, Mailfence, was launched in 2013 after the Snowden and NSA story hit the headlines. Just like the above two counterparts, it encrypts communications using OpenPGP. The use of these crypto libraries ensures that your message is very unlikely to be hacked once sent. As opposed to Tutanota and ProtonMail, a user can access their Mailfence emails via SMTP and IMAP by means of an email client, but I’d rather not consider this to be a benefit. Also, the service leverages two-factor authentication. One of the stumbling blocks is that Mailfence is inaccessible in some countries. However, as soon as you enable VPN – voila, it works quite fast and smoothly.

Important: Those who are reluctant to spawn online identities and trust anyone with their sensitive information can use a lifehack for reliable message exchange via any email service.

Step 1: You create a message while indicating a random recipient, for instance, [email protected], and simply save it as a draft rather than send it.

Step 2: You provide the intended recipient with the username and password for your email account.

Step 3: The recipient reads the message that was saved as a draft and deletes it.

Step 4: You change the password. Email drafts aren’t retained by the provider and they are absolutely free to use.