In this article, I describe the most important points about email encryption in a kind of FAQ. We have all heard a few buzzwords on this topic in the past, and we know most of them… And still there can be question marks again and again.
I hope this article sheds more light on the subject!
What is end-to-end encryption?
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) means that you encrypt your own data on your own device, and only you and the intended recipient can access it. Thanks to this encryption, no one else can read your E2EE messages.
What is OpenPGP?
OpenPGP is a popular and secure encryption standard used to secure emails. OpenPGP encrypts the body of emails and attachments. It does not encrypt the subject line and other metadata, such as when an email was sent or who the sender is.
What is TLS?
Transport Layer Security (TLS), the modern successor to SSL, is an encryption standard that allows asymmetric key exchanges using public-key cryptography (see main text above) to securely transmit data. TLS is most well-known for being the security layer for HTTPS, which secures connections to websites, but it is also used to secure emails in transit.
Learn more about HTTPS
What is AES?
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a symmetric-key cipher, which means that the same key used to encrypt the data is used to decrypt it. It does not provide any way to securely transmit the key, so AES is mainly used to secure data at rest. AES is often considered the de facto standard of symmetric-key ciphers, in large part because the United States government uses it to protect classified data.
What is ECDH?
Elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) is an asymmetric key agreement protocol used to secure encryption keys during a TLS key exchange. It uses the properties of a particular type of algebraic curve numbers to encrypt connections.
What is zero-access encryption?
The message is encrypted using your public key and can only be decrypted using your private key, which only you possess. This means that while a message is stored on our servers, only you can access it.
If the person you wrote an email to does not use zero-access encryption, their email service can likely read it.
To send emails that are truly secure, even on other email services’ servers, you should use one of our end-to-end encrypted email options.