Online privacy has started to sound like an oxymoron! Every e-mail (confidential or not) you send is sent as a plain text and if intercepted, it will just be a sitting duck with no protection whatsoever.
There are multiple ways to automatically encrypt text messages and emails using some kind of hash functions like MD5, SHA1 etc. Of-course you can setup Outlook for encryption, but it’s very technical and requires lots of other services in order to work correctly. A simple way to encrypt a text message is to use any of the free online tools listed below
Top 10 Online Services to Encrypt Text Messages
1. Crypo – Crypo has a huge collection of online tools like Hash generator, one pass generator, pass phrase generator etc. For encrypting email messages, you can use AER-256+ or other related tool.
2. Encrypt Easy – Encrypt and secure your messages online with Blowfish, which is one of the most secured encryption algorithm. Pretty straight-forward to use.
3. Lock My Stuff – In addition to encryption and decryption of messages, it allows you to store the encrypted text on its server and send the URL.
4. Crypto – A simple text encryption Java based applet with key, Caesar and Pseudo-CES encryption options.
5. Webnet77 Blowfish encryption – An alternative to Encrypt-easy tool with not so attractive user interface but equally efficient online service.
6. Dinofilias – A very simple and easy-to-use online text encryption service.
7. Infoencrypt – It’s a popular message encryption service with a nice UI and detailed explanation on the features and uses of text encryption.
8. EnetPlanet – Another nice encryption service with an option to save the encrypted text to a file or choose an encrypted file and decrypt it.
9. Flexcrypt – quite similar to Infoencrypt.
10. Lockbin – free online email encryption service which was quite popular when it was introduced but had its own share of problems later on. It is still useful to encrypt the message and mail it directly using the form available.
Which one you like and why? Any other service worth including in the list above?
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April 16th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Questions that readers should consider include “Do you really want to use a free encryption solution?” and “What are the risks?”
and: “Will you get what you pay for? What is the incentive of the free encryption vendor to protect what you have given them? How important is your information and how much effort do you want to put into a free technology that may not be fully baked…and how easy will it be to force recipients of free email encryption to trust it and use it?”
If you still want to use something free, go for it.
One of the better email encryption options that is pretty reasonably priced is Voltage SecureMail.
Voltage SecureMail helps you easily send encrypted email to anyone.
Voltage SecureMail has Outlook plug-ins or you can use a web interface for sending encrypted email. Messages are completely controlled by the sender and recipient in their sent folder and inbox. No messages are stored on servers so you don’t run into Hush or Zix issues where messages expire. You always have the ability to decrypt your messages.
Recipients don’t need any special software to decrypt and read their messages, just a browser. And recipients don’t need to pay to read their email. In fact, they even get free support from Voltage. It’s much easier to use than PGP, S/MIME or other older solutions…and just as secure…which is probably why they can afford to offer free support to their customers and recipients…unlike the other solutions.
It’s an ideal solution to help address state privacy regulations in Massachusetts and Nevada as well as the more general HIPAA, SOX, PCI requirements, etc.
There is a free trial at: http://www.voltage.com/vsn
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:35 am
This is just basic. I mean security 101 kind of stuff…..From what I could tell, only FlexCrypt provided a secure, SSL connection. What good is typing a message to “encrypt” when it’s in plain text in the first place for your ISP to see?!?! That’s HORRIBLY insecure. I only saw https at FlexCrypt. The ones with only a regular http connection is not secure from the get-go. Many will fall for it though thinking it’s “secure.”
August 1st, 2010 at 12:45 am