Every day we receive dozens of emails from customers, vendors, and friends old and new. Normally these messages are pretty innocuous but a couple of weeks ago a customer forwarded a report they had received via email from one of their customers. Imagine my surprise when I opened the attachment to find dozens of rows of sensitive information, some pertaining to my customer but much more of it pertaining to third parties completely outside of our interest.
With this in mind I feel compelled to write this simple reminder:
EMAIL IS NOT SECURE COMMUNICATION.
In preparing to write this article expounding all the of the concerns about the security of email, I found this resource that explains the issue very well: Can email ever be secure?
Have you ever been asked to sign a document and return it via email? Don’t do it! Always protect your signature as much as your bank account information or social security number. Any scrap of information that identifies you to a financial institution can be used by criminals to turn your life upside down. And nobody but the criminals wants that.
Think twice before hitting Send. Use more secure document transfer services like DropSend to move sensitive information. And always keep in mind that in our present society the only real security comes from diligent caution with maybe just a touch of paranoia.