I don’t want to alarm you (too much at least), but there’s a very good chance that your email account is not as secure as you think it is.
Sure, Gmail might be convenient and easy to use, and to a certain degree even secure, but it’s far from the most secure email account provider.
Gmail’s TLS encryption should be enough to protect your data (most of the time at least) from hackers, however, it’s often not hackers that you need to worry about.
Your email provider should protect you from other prying eyes as well.
And Google itself has been known to use bots to collect valuable data on you via your emails.
So, if you’re looking to make your email more secure, first here are a couple of tips:
How to Make Your Email Account More Secure
There are a couple of ways to make your account more secure.
- Don’t use a password that’s easy to guess
Only one person in the world should know your email password and that is you.
Don’t tell anyone your password. Not your best friend, not your mom, not your dog. No one.
Don’t give any hints to your password to anyone. That means don’t use your kids’ names, your birth date, first pet name. Nothing that someone might tie back to you and figure out your password.
Don’t leave your password on a piece of paper lying around. That’s just stupid. If you can’t remember your password, at least be smart and use a more secure method of storing your password with a password manager like LastPass.
- Use information that can’t be traced back to you easily
If you’re worried about stalkers or for some other reason don’t want people to know that you’re behind an email account, then don’t use your real name and information in the email account.
Use a pseudonym instead and fake birth date.
There’s one important caveat to this, however.
Something like skywalker100@gmail.com will look far less professional than yourrealname@gmail.com, so if you’re looking to do business with someone and establish trust, you might want to skip that.
- Don’t let your browser remember your password and username
Letting the browser remember your username and password can be convenient for all those social media and other website accounts that you have on the Internet, but there’s one account and password that you shouldn’t let it remember.
Your email account and password.
That way, anyone with access to your computer or laptop could just open the email signing page and there will be a nice surprise waiting for them.
So, if you see a “remember me” checkbox, don’t check it.
- Use 2-Step Verification
Most of us have more than one email account. Usually one personal and one for work.
What you can do to make your email more secure is to use two-step verification.
That way, if you or anyone tries to log in to your account from a different location or device than usual, you’ll get a code to your mobile phone or secondary email account.
Without this code, it won’t be possible to access the account.
- Log off
If you’re going to leave your laptop at work or are using it outside your home, keep in mind that there’s always a chance that other people might try to access your email.
If you’re constantly logged in you’re just making it easier for them.
It’s not enough to just shut down your laptop or close the browser.
You need to log off completely from your email if you’re not using it.
Best Free Most Secure Email Account 2020
However, even if you do all of this, keep in mind that Gmail is still not the most secure email account provider.
There are much more secure email services that you should use instead of Gmail if you want to keep your email account secure.
Here are the four best free most secure email account providers:
CTemplar’s Free plan will give you 1GB of free storage (data is stored on secure servers in Iceland) and 200 messages per day.
Unlike most “secure” email services, CTemplar will encrypt your email content, attachments, subjects AND contacts and ont just one or two.
Furthermore, CTemplar’s Free plan also provides 2-Factor authentication, brute force protection and anti-phishing protection for better email security.
- Tutanota
If you need a secure private email account, Tutanota’s Free plan might be what you’re looking for.
Keep in mind, however, that this will only be good for one person and that the Free plan works for Tutanota domains only. So, if you want a custom domain (for instance @yourcompany.com, you’ll have to sign up for a paid plan.
However, you are getting 1GB of free storage.
- Mailfence
This Belgium-based service is easily one of the most secure email account providers you’ll find and it offers 2-step verification, 1GB of free storage (500<B email and 500MB documents), plus email support (something often overlooked by other secure email providers, at least for free plans).
If you’re a complete beginner when it comes to securing your email account, Mailfence will also offer to encrypt your password using a “shared secret”.
What this means is that you don’t have to bother with complicated PGP keys (Mailfence is fully compatible with PGP encryption) and can send secure messages and attachments via Mailfence.
- ProtonMail
ProtonMail is probably the best known free most secure email account service on the Internet.
It’s fully compatible with PGP for sending encrypted email messages online and emails will also be encrypted at rest.
For storing, ProtonMail uses data servers in Switzerland, which has a much more stringent privacy policy than, say, the United States.
Furthermore, ProtonMail also won’t log your data, so even if Swiss authorities get a warrant to disclose your data, there won’t be anything they can show.
The problem, however, is that, in order to sign up for ProtonMail, you’ll have to verify your account with another email address. This isn’t particularly convenient and you’ll need a “burner” or “throwaway” email account.
What do you think is the most secure email account 2020?
Leave a Reply