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Part 8 - Safeguarding Correspondence

Many people world over have a very legitimate need to engage in important and sensitive correspondence with others. But, because of sensitivity issue, they worry about security of eMail and agonize over ways to ensure their correspondence can't be intercepted. If you are one of these people, I'm sorry for this bucket of very cold water I am now tipping over your hopes and aspirations:

*** There is no way to be completely certain *** *** your eMail can't be intercepted ***

But wait — don't slink off dejected! I do have an answer for you.

What if it simply didn't matter if someone else could look at your correspondence? What if, with not much more effort than a couple of mouse clicks, you could turn your very sensitive eMail contents into an unintelligible jumble of characters that no spy could ever make sense of? And what if your addressee, and ONLY your addressee, could turn that jumble back into original message with same ease and celerity? Security against unauthorized viewing would no longer be an issue — in fact you could post message on your corner store bulletin board without a care in world.

Of course I'm talking about encryption, but don't sigh and turn away! If you knew about this sort of encryption you'd already be using it, because I guarantee it really is as easy as I just described.

Everyone who understands effectiveness and potential of encryption will tell you that it is — in personal and commercial arenas at least — an incredibly effective resource that is largely going to waste. While this article is specifically concerned with securing eMail, subject has much greater implications, even at personal-use level. For example, we all know we shouldn't keep sensitive information such as online banking and credit card details on our PCs, but we do anyway. Right? Don't worry — I'm not going to lecture you about dangers of keeping such information on your computer. But I am going to tell you that unless you take certain precautions you ARE going to regret it sooner or later.

Oh, and before I get on with specifics … if you are wondering why on earth any honest person would need to protect their eMail with encryption, consider this:

Any eMail you send can be read by at least following people: - anyone employed by your Internet Service Provider (ISP); - anyone employed by addressees ISP; - operators and their employees of any of Internet routers (possibly dozens of them) that your eMail data passes through en route to your addressee.

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Part 1 - Introduction

We all appreciate that perception of "success" in business is a matter of degree. Success to one person may be earning enough to pay household bills on time, have three weeks holiday a year and a new car every three. Another may settle for nothing less than being able to fly first-class to their own overseas holiday home and lease a new luxury sports coupe every 12 months.

If you operate any sort of a business, online or off, your degree of success may range from mild to outrageous. On other hand, if you are not having any success at all, you probably have other things on your mind than securing something that you don't yet have. It's not that this series doesn't apply to yet-to-be successful – it certainly should – but they probably will not allot it a very high priority.

So in essence I am aiming this series of articles more at those who are successful, or who are at least well on road to success, if only because they have most to lose. But smart beginners will do themselves a great service by riding along also.

Success in business rarely comes overnight. While it is uncommon exception to that rule that gets publicity, success is much more often result of steady progress towards a goal. That's making a complex effort sound simple, but however easy or difficult your progress, fact that you are progressing is pleasant to contemplate.

Now, what I want to do is disrupt your pleasant reverie.

I want to shatter your calm, give you something to panic about and get you thinking about a lot of bad stuff. And I want to do that not because I am a nasty little man, but because I want to help you.

A lot of bad stuff has happened to a lot of successful people online and, with every day that passes, odds increase that similar bad stuff will happen to you. The result could be as destructive as having every shred of your success wrenched from your grasp in space of moments. Many thousands of businesses, big and small, have gone to wall because they didn't adequately prepare for bad stuff I am going to tell you about.

But first I guess I need to give you a reason to read and believe.