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Send Encrypted Emails Easily with Lockbin
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 1:00 AM on December 7, 2007
Free email web site Lockbin offers a software-free, no-sign-up method of keeping outsiders from reading your messages. The process is fairly simple—after clicking through an agreement and CAPTCHA page, you write your message and choose a secret word. After you tell the recipient the de-coding word (hopefully any way but email), they can read the message once on Lockbin's site before it's deleted forever. As the site itself notes, it's not perfect encryption, but it's a pretty easy way to keep email snoopers away from your message. One footnote: Two test emails I sent yesterday were delayed for more than four hours, but another message went through instantly this morning. If speed is a necessity, try encrypting your own email or using Greasemonkey to encrypt Gmail.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Webshit
Posted 1:25 PM 6/12/07
Nothings beats GPG. Free, open, fast ands safe.
Webshit
unixedout
Posted 11:42 AM 6/12/07
Right! Is there a good way around this problem? AS I would like to use encrypted Emails between me and my bro sometimes.
unixedout
Mahmoud
Posted 10:35 AM 6/12/07
But that's a false sense of security/encryption. When it is important to encrypt information, you should not trust a 3rd party with your unencrypted information.
In this site, your message and key if they are encrypted, most probably will happen on the server not on your client/computer. So your key and message are submitted unencrypted although through SSL channel, the server has them unencrypted.
Mahmoud
da5id_nz
Posted 5:05 PM 6/12/07
If you want to communicate securly with a certain person or people, both of you could get a free account at hushmail.com.
da5id_nz
numbersix
Posted 4:56 PM 6/12/07
GPG
It's really quite easy and continually frustrating to me how few people take the 15 minutes it'd take to set up.
FireGPG makes it painless for gmail:
[firegpg.tuxfamily.org]
numbersix
cv
Posted 4:49 PM 6/12/07
@Unixedout:
The two of you can get Thawte Freemail S/MIME certs from Thawte.com (as the name alludes to, they're free).
Like S/MIME, GPG mail encryption has never taken off; the general public doesn't find secure e-mail particularly compelling, even if there are already a couple of proven solutions.
cv
Mahmoud
Posted 1:02 AM 7/12/07
@Unixedout: If you using gmail, then try using FireGPG firefox extension (as NUMBERSIX suggested) otherwise use Enigmail if you are using Mozilla Thunderbird EMail Client. Both requires GPG installed, for windows get GPG4Win.
Mahmoud
mcgraths
Posted 9:31 AM 7/12/07
I was a beta tester for TrustMe for Windows which is due out the end of the month. It is currently only for Windows though, but works with any email client as well as webmail. From what I've read it looks like a very secure product.
mcgraths
shadowfirebird
Posted 4:44 AM 7/12/07
re: Hushmail:
People should be aware that Hushmail have now admitted they have a security backdoor, and will use it to hand over copies of your unencrypted messages to the authorities if they are requested to.
Of course, that might not concern you. But you should know.
shadowfirebird
numbersix
Posted 4:43 PM 7/12/07
@MCGRATHS
Why would you want to put someone else in charge of your private key? I'm also always skeptical of encryption code that is not peer reviewed.
numbersix