Everything that you send in an email, from the attachments to the text, goes on a dangerous journey every time that you click send. Its path is filled with traps that cybercriminals can use to steal your information.

One of the tips that you should follow to protect the content of your emails is to encrypt them. This way, even if someone is able to access your emails, they won’t be able to read the content.

Although it might surprise you, the journey that your emails take isn’t as straightforward as you might think. It isn’t a simple matter of going from A to B, but rather the emails pass through different routes which put them at risk of attack from cybercriminals:

• Step 1: The email that you send from your device to your company’s server. Larger companies generally make sure that this is a safe route and look after it. If you see a green icon or a lock icon in the address bar then you can relax  it’s secure. The journey, however, continues…

• Step 2: Next you email needs to pass through different serves until it reaches its destination. This part of the journey is the most dangerous as the email can be intercepted at any time, especially if the server used by the receiver isn’t protected correctly. The worst thing about this stage is that users are completely blind – there is no way of knowing how secure the connection is between the two servers. The only way to be sure is to encrypt your messages.

• Step 3: Not only is it going between two servers, but the email still has to travel to the computer or the mobile device. This stage can also be complicated and, furthermore, once it arrives at the other device it can still be under threat. You have to remember that computers are always at risk if the correct security procedures aren’t followed.

With so many different ways to steal information from emails, it is vital to protect the content and attachments that you send.

There are many ways to encrypt your emails and some messaging services offer it as an option. There are other options to ensure increased protection for your emails, such as the one offered by Panda, which encrypt your attachments to make sure that the content is secure. It isn’t necessary to be an expert to protect your online security, but it is better to behave like one.

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