Send secure and encrypted text via email online
Posted on November 19, 2008 at 5:34 am
Previously, I wrote about a web service called LockBin, which was a free way to send encrypted email messages for free. However, the service has been having issues and doesn’t seem to work anymore for some reason.
LockBin basically worked by encrypting the text message using some kind of hash function like MD5 or SHA1. If you really want to send an encrypted email, why not just encrypt the text yourself! You can setup Outlook for encryption, but it’s very technical and requires lots of other services in order to work correctly.
A simple way to encrypt a text message is to use a free online tool like the Encrypt/Decrypt tool provided by WebMax.
The tool is pretty straightforward, just type in your text and choose the hash function you want to use to encode or encrypt it in. So type in your secret message and click MD5 Encrypt or SHA1 Encrypt for the strongest encryption possible.
Now just email the encrypted text in a normal email to someone and call them and tell them to go to the same site, paste the text and click the appropriate decrypt button at the right! Of course you should never EMAIL the person telling them how to do this because if the email is intercepted, it would be pretty easy for a hacker to decrypt the message.
Once the other person knows, you can rest assured that any text you send will not be readable by anyone unless they know to go to this website. Go to the website and paste in the following SHA1 encrypted text and click SHA1 Decrypt and see my “secret” message:
d8f5588440aba29feee577e9a306e0ab52cf1201
Pretty nifty eh? Very useful if you want to quickly send something very confidential or sensitive to someone via email or instant message, etc. Just make sure that no one else gets to know about the website other than the people you want to share private information with.
If you currently use some other method to send secure encrypted emails or messages across the Internet, let us know in the comments! Enjoy! Source: MakeUseOf
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“Just make sure that no one else gets to know about the website other than the people you want to share private information with.”
Great! I was using this to encrypt all my super secret information, and now you’ve gone and blabbed about it to everybody. Now the bad guys know how to get at my super secret information! Thanks a lot!
It’s a website. Which means Google knows about it. And I think once Google knows about it, it’s pretty safe to say the rest of the world does, too.
This is what would be considered either “security theater,” or “security by obscurity,” and is a prime example of what _not_ to do if you want your information to be secure.
The SHA1 hash is great for encrypting. It’s very secure.
But the most important part of the entire encryption process is that you know what the decryption key is, and NOBODY else does.
In this case, not only does somebody else (the website owner) know what the decryption key is, but you DON’T! You’ve encrypted your super secret information, and given somebody you don’t know the only key.
Not only that, but you’ve also simply exchanged the insecure email for an insecure website. If you’re so concerned about BadGuy sniffing your or the recipient’s email connection, then BadGuy is also going to be in a position to sniff the insecure connection to this website when you send your text to be encrypted/decrypted.
The ONLY secure method for email is to encrypt the email directly on your computer, with either the recipient’s public key, or a shared key that only the two of you know.
A shared key is not as secure, because even if you delete the unencrypted copy of the email, someone can still decrypt with your copy of the shared key.
With the recipient’s public key, once you’ve encrypted the email, you cannot decrypt it again with the same key. The only key that will decrypt that email is the recipient’s private key, which you don’t know. If you properly delete the unencrypted email, the contents CANNOT be decrypted on your end, even if someone steals your computer. The ONLY person who can decrypt is the recipient.
Now THAT’S real security.