In my daily communications with clients and providers I’ve noticed that sometimes they will send confidential information over email. I have received credit card information, social security numbers and other data that in the wrong hands can wreck havoc. I appreciate very much the trust these people put in me, but the fact is that email in transit is in OPEN TEXT form for EVERY computer between the sender and the receiver can read it. There are typically one or two dozen computers in any internet communication and trusting everyone in that chain is extremely naive at best.

I just discovered a service called Encipher.it that will solve this problem. you just need to visit https://encipher.it/ and write your message in the box. when you click on “Encipher It”, it will ask for a password (called an encryption key in spy parlance) and it will convert your message into gibberish.

For example, I used it to convert:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

to

EnCt28070c2f6ffc645fabbd087024256938eb2ba3c038070c2f
6ffc645fabbd08702K4MihJ/DkQMYtPvd0VA4AMsZdSIbul5ai/
of3Gp9qYQrFD3yJBQQHtzgZrJFciYmkxkonSTuDM7g7D7ow2
aENwokAhV0v12tQfKiLj5h5HmZ5hA4NdXoVQKWJ2DZYCVO
kCJoD5r4yMxUWwNUrvh7y0Qy5ModBzGPjjqdF4ytDlGqiuPQ
M8JqRqGSreaIiPUspLcHIwEmS

Using ‘password123’ as the encryption key (a TERRIBLE password by the way, please read my article about password strength HERE http://goo.gl/36yti)

You can copy and paste this encrypted message into your email (it has a feature to directly insert into Gmail or Google Mail for Business) and you can even ask to convert it into a short URL, you send the encrypted version and then you can contact the person receiving the message via phone, fax or a SEPARATE email message. This last option diminishes the risk because each email is likely to take a different route but is much less secure.

To watch a video on how it works please click HERE https://encipher.it/help#video

You can set up a bookmaklet in your browser if you want to but is not required. I tested with my iPhone and it worked as expected and they even have a mobile website that works great

PC World published a review HERE http://goo.gl/FCiYT

Hope this little tip can make your communications more secure.