Comment Can People Read My Email? (Score 1) 165
Can they read it? Yes, they can. Now that doesn't mean there is always someone out there reading your email. With millions of people on the Internet, our individual messages likely get lost in a crowd. But you've got to realized that once email leaves your system, it may sit on another computer hundreds or thousands of miles away, and you have no control over who has access to it. What if that computer has a liberal security policy, or is full of security holes? The best thing to do is realize that your email is not going to be secure and avoid transmitting sensitive material, as already recommended in Chapter 3. Even if no one reads your email in transit, the recipient could forward the message on to whomever he or she pleases.
It is possible to physically "tap" networks, just like tapping phone lines. And if someone is able to do that, he can read anything going across those wires. But all hope is not lost: There are ways to make your email more secure. One is to encrypt it before it leaves your computer. Encrypt means simply that it's encoded into something that no one else can read without the proper key. Upon receipt, the message must be decrypted on the the recipient's machine.
The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking, Tracy LaQuey, 1993, p.122.
