Email Privacy Risks and How to Avoid Them

Email communication is the epicenter of our digital lives—but that wasn’t so when email first came onto the scene. Because of that, hundreds of today’s modern email systems are operating with the security measures with which they were built—which are drastically incompatible with the way in which email powers all of our digital communication.

The Dangers of Free Email

The free email services that are on the market are holdovers from the early days of the internet and so were created without security as a primary concern, leaving users open to a wide range of email privacy risks.

While it would seem commonsense that email providers would want to guarantee users safety and security, that’s not the case, as it’s the email providers themselves that pose the biggest email privacy risk. Many large providers scan, copy and sell users’ information in order to profit of of their members. Corporations, in turn, use this information—as well as other data an email provider can obtain about a user’s online activity—to tailor advertising to line their own pockets.

Not only do providers collect your data, they also store it to help companies and even the government analyze citizens’ daily habits to build a full picture of their digital activity. If these servers storing this information were to be compromised—either intentionally or through a security flaw—all of that information could be exposed to countless more pairs of eyes. This issue becomes even more pressing when it involves data from professional accounts, as corporations can be at risk for serious financial and other types of damage.