this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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I've always been a bit uneasy about encrypted email because I feel like it's only as good as you handle it. As soon as it's sent, the recipient can do whatever they want.
To be clear, I'm a total idiot when it comes to understanding how this works.
That's encryption in a nutshell. A message is encrypted until it reaches its destination, and then by necessity is unencrypted in order to read it. Once your recipient has the unencrypted message, you don't have any control over what happens to it.
Fundamentally, if you don't trust the recipient (or their system provider), no amount of encryption will protect your message.
The biggest advantage of private email is that it stops the email provider itself from data mining some of your most sensitive info, as Gmail and other free emails most certainly do. Basically it's protection from surveillance capitalism, but you rightfully can't consider it a secure way to send messages or info to other, non-encrypted users.