Secure email

Quote:

Original post by Witchcraven Does anyone know of a free secure email account? Also, is it possible to send ssl mail from php?

No, and not by default. There are the OpenSSL functions that you can use if you want to figure them out. You need to compile it in to PHP, and the functions are mostly broken right now.

I can understand why you might want s/mime encrypted mail, in the cases where you don't want to have anybody but the reciever able to view it.

Why do you want SSL email?

The only significant reason to use SSL for mail is if you are in a hostile local network and you trust the other end to be secure. In other words, you don't want your sysadmin to view the contents with a packet sniffer, but don't care about the rest of the Internet. Since mail is a store-and-forward system, your message is usually going to be viewable accross the Internet many times over regardless of your choice of SSL.

frob.

As far as "SSL mail" is concerned, you're probably talking about either S/MIME, or PGP, which are the two major email encryption systems in use.

Both of them use PKI, which means that you need the public key of the recipient to encrypt a message, not your own key (or a shared key).

The reason for encrypting email is, it means that if for any reason, it ends up in the wrong place (relatively likely), the recipient cannot decipher potentially important info.

If your server is compromised, it won't help you. If your client is compromised, it won't help you. But if anything in between is compromised, you're (hopefully) safe.

Mark