Protect Your Emails From Snoops by Marc Hurwitz
At Crossroads Investigations, not only are we great at finding hard-to-find information on other people, but we also advise our clients on how to to keep their own information secure. Because I’m a former CIA officer, I have a wide network of experts to draw upon to ensure my clients have access to the best expertise possible. A question that pops up from time to time is, “How do I send e-mails securely?” We offer the following considerations:
Hide Yourself. Emails can be traced back to the sender’s computer via its IP address. Crossroads recently tracked a runaway teenager using just this method. The US Government asked Google 16,281 times for just this information for the first half of 2011. Email providers keep 18 months of this information on hand. However, you can hide your IP address any number of ways – if you google “hide my IP address,” a number of free solutions appears. One popular site is TorpoProject. There are many other “anonymizer” sites out there.
Encrypt your messages. Take it from me, there is no better email encryption tool than Symantec-owned PGP (which stands for Pretty Good Privacy). This is for the serious emailer who wants to ensure no emails are getting hacked. Another popular secure email program is Hushmail.
Don’t be clever. Former CIA director David Petraeus and his mistress used a shared Gmail account, and instead of sending messages to each other, they just saved messages in the draft folder, thinking this would preclude a digital trail. However, e-mails saved to the draft folder are still stored in the cloud. Even if they are deleted, e-mail service providers can be compelled to provide copies.
Please consider Crossroads the next time you need to find someone – chances are your target has not just received these useful tips, and we will find them!
