Gwebs Cryptographer

Security issues have been at the news recently and all the time more and more things are coming up. So many people are interested about their own security, when spending time with online societies and communicating with others, but just so few people are really using any software which is offering better security. The most of these people are just waiting the easiest one to use and cheapest one to buy, the whole field of Internet security seems to be offering too many options and choices. “Do I really need this? Which one is best for me? It’s too difficult to use, isn’t it ?” These questions are common among people, who have interest but don’t know where to start.

It seems to be that the most of the people have a belief that “e-mail is pretty secured service”, and “anyway no-one is interested about my e-mails”, but in fact there are so many people who have interest for normal users’ accounts, and information. And e-mail itself, is not secured at all. Even if the user’s own computer is having anti-virus software and firewall doesn’t guarantee that outgoing or incoming messages are secured. The following table (Table 1.) shows a little comparison between postcard, e-mail, registered letter and encrypted e-mail. This kind of comparison is quite common while talking about security issues among delivering messages from person to another. In my humble opinion I think this comparison is pretty close to truth, and gives you the idea, how messages are really going “out-there”.

The following picture (Pic.1.) shows how message can change on the way and how come neither sender or receiver cannot be sure that if the message has been tampered or not, if any kind of encryption is not used. This case represents also the postcard. Posting a letter or encrypted e-mail, then the possibility that message changes on the way is decreasing significantly, it’s represented in a picture (Pic.2.).

Pic 1. Postcard / E-mail without encryption

Pic 2. Letter / E-mail with encryption

The animations above are representing the situations of sending a message via postcard and letter / or e-mail with and without encryption. In both cases sender and receiver are not aware which kind of picture the other one is seeing. They can just believe that “This is the picture the receiver will see. / This is the picture the sender wanted me to see.” So it is very difficult to prove afterwards that was the message changing on the way or not. Well, common sense says: “How about I give him/her a call and ask about this?” But are people really willing to do it after every single message? I am not. Then the whole idea about sending an email is basically useless, if it’s not sure whether the message is going through without changing on the way.

Whenever people are sending their personal information, job applications, contracts, what ever that contains any piece of personal information, like name, social security number, address, phone number, etc. Why not using encryption ? Well, at least I’m not willing to put those pieces of information to the postcard, are You ?

There was earlier a bit similar post in our blog: “The Difference Between A Stolen Mailbox and a Steel Envelope: An interview with gWebs CTO Anderson Jin.” Please check it through also!

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