[nylug-talk] e-Mail

[Ron Guerin]

plut0248crat at isp.com wrote:
> I need to find a book that details exactly how e-mail is circulated
> through the internet.

It's best documented on the web itself.

> I've had a privacy intrusion conducted by a third
> party using Google. Brought up all the email sent over the past three
> years, who I talk with, what CD's I've ordered, everything. I need to know
> if encryption will prevent this or if I'm wasting my time.

E-mail circulates mostly in unencrypted form, and when it is encrypted
between your computer and your mail server  (usin SSL/TLS), it still is
no guarantee that your server won't pass it to the next unencrypted, or
that any other mail server in the delivery chain won't suddenly drop
back to unencrypted transmission.

If you want your mail to be encrypted end-to-end, as in from the moment
it's leaving the sender's computer to the moment you read it yourself,
the mail needs to be encrypted by the sender, and decrypted by the
recipient (you).  This is generally done using GPG,PGP or S/MIME.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME

If your ISP (in this case, Google) can read your mail, then so can
anyone else with a valid subpoena.  I have read that some of the larger
ISPs now have departments of people just to handle such requests.

- Ron