Secure email

[canoflan]

I am setting up the foundations for a photography business for the first time.

Concerning email communications with your clients, how do you address security in terms of ensuring that others cannot hack your email accounts and read your customers, or your, emails?

I primarily am addressing this to those that have email through Yahoo, Gmail, etc... and not through Outlook or something local.

If I would like to use Yahoo or some other email hosting like that, what would be your recommendations?

Anyone using Yahoo small business custom email accounts?

Thanks for any input.
Canoflan

[bondarnes]

If you want to look like a "real" business I would avoid a yahoo or Gmail account. In my opinion those say newbie or wannabe. I use (free download) Mozilla Thunderbird for my browser and my e-mail account is through my isp charter.net. My account is password protected and I have had no issues with security.

[HeatherLou]

I use Yahoo for my site hosting and business email, and when you host your site, you can set up emails that say yourname@yoursite.com. My admin email is yahoo, but the biz email is heather@nixpixstudios.com, so no one knows its a yahoo account. I'm not so sure about security issues, cuz I'm not really sending or getting *sensitive* documents. I have had my regular yahoo account for about 10 years, and the biz one for 2 years. Other than getting tons of spam.....its worked well for me.

[Concisus Cognatus]

One workable security solution would be to apply 128 bit encryption to any sent emails. Then call the recipient and give them the password to unlock the encryption. Security requires added layers of work in order to make email secure. There are probably other ways of doing the same thing I just don't know about them.

[dngrCharlie]

I'm going to add that while you may want privacy with regard to e-mail as a general rule it's not private at all on the Internet. E-mail can be intercepted in transit and read (it's in plain text) and the mail admins of whoever hosts your e-mail can always get in if they want to. Never, ever send anything sensitive via e-mail ever. This included work e-mail or personal e-mail.

Bigger companies can host their own e-mail and the internal messages are relatively secure (from everyone but the admins) but when messages leave the company and get on the Internet there is no expectation of privacy. At my last job I was an e-mail (and everything else) admin and the rule was never look at an employees e-mail unless the owner was over your shoulder telling you to (it's technically all his anyway) but there was no real way to enforce that rule.

You can encrypt e-mail but it may be more of a discouragement to your customers as most users have a real hard time with normal logon passwords.

If you need to collect private data from customers over the Internet I would suggest finding a hosting company that can setup a web-based form that is protected by SSL. That way you can direct customers to the web page where they can fill out whatever.

There are a lot of companies that will help you setup a domain name (i.e. a dot.com name) with e-mail and a web page for very little money. I think Microsoft even offers this service (i.e. Microsoft Office LIve). Disclaimer: I've never used the Microsoft or any other service like this so do your own research!

[Ahh!]

For a fee, there are products like Authentica, mobrien, and others. Most work by sending an email to the recipient with a link to their website where they can log in and view the email. Not too bad if you are that concerned about security.

I also recommend the use of a hosting service that either provides pop mail or mail forwarding to your own gmail, yahoo, msn, or other provider, rather than providing your real address. I agree that Yourname123@yahoo.com looks pretty tacky.

[canoflan]

Yeah, I have decided to go with Yahoo Small Business. It allowed me a free domain name and $34 a year for a personal email address. I think this is a good solution.