How to Set Up Encrypted Mail on Mac OS X

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How to Set Up Encrypted Mail on Mac OS X
by François Joseph de Kermadec
01/20/2004

Do you send postcards? Probably. They're great to convey best wishes for the New Year, to send a "get well" note to your neighbor who is in the hospital, or a "hello" note to coworkers from your holiday place.

However, you would never send confidential information on a postcard, would you? Certainly not since the postal workers and every single person who handles the card can read its contents while it travels through the post system.

Well, I have news for you! When you send email to someone, most of the time you're not sending them a letter, carefully enclosed in an envelope. You're basically sending them the electronic version of postcards that can be read -- or worse, altered -- by anyone during their transit over the network.

Indeed, standard mail is not a secure means of communication: every single note you send travels through dozens of servers before arriving in your recipient's inbox and can be stopped, altered, and resent without you or the recipient noticing it.

While this may be acceptable when you're exchange healthy cooking tips with your grandmother, this is certainly not the case in your everyday workflow.

Luckily, Apple just added support for S/MIME in the latest Mail version, the one that ships with Panther.

Read more here...