What is the best and safest mail? It is simply not possible to neglect data transfer security today, especially when it comes to confidential personal or professional information. Your mail may be hacked, but the risks can be minimized if you can correctly compose passwords and use reliable services. Which mail is the most reliable and secure? Consider several mail services, taking into account their features, advantages and disadvantages, and also talk about security rules that will help protect your data from theft.
The safest mail: rating
Let's move on to specific email clients. What is the safest mail on the Internet? Rating is quite difficult, because common services are usually not well protected against hacking. The most reliable are foreign services, especially users select Swiss and German email clients. If you choose between the popular and Russian-language options (Yandex.Mail, Mail.ru, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo), then it is better to stay at Gmail, but encryption is far from ideal there. Therefore, you need to think about the security of the password for accessing mail.
The safest mail, according to many users from all over the world, is the Swiss service Proton Mail. However, during registration, confirmation is required from a phone number or a spare email address. The developers assure that they will not save this data, but it is worth hedging using a virtual number or other mail, where you do not need to specify such data during registration. Further in the ranking are Mailfence, ConterMail, Tutanota, Posteo, VauletMail and so on.
Common Mail.ru and Yandex.Mail
It is undesirable to use Mail.ru and Yandex.Mail for working correspondence and receiving / sending important documents, but these services are quite suitable as personal mail. You can use these email clients to read news and newsletters, but do not bind electronic wallets to them (except for Yandex.Money), sites and hosting. In the rating of the most secure mail these services do not exist.
Gmail: The Most Popular Email
Of the "regular" (that is, widespread and popular on the Russian-speaking Internet) email clients, Gmail is the safest. There is a binding of the account to the phone number, as well as two-step authentication. If you try to enter the mail from a different geographical address or even from another browser, then even after entering the password correctly, you will need to confirm your identity and the right to use the email address from the phone that was associated with the account during registration. At the moment, even many programmers call Gmail the safest mail.
Minimal authentication failures can sometimes occur, but the client is completely free, so users should not complain about it. In some cases, the code does not immediately come in the SMS message, but then a voice call arrives. You need to answer and listen to the code that the computer will “say”. For skipping spam, the mailer is also quite good. Of course, the protection is not 100% complete, but if you mark the message as spam once, the mailbox will automatically learn and in the future will forward all messages from this recipient or with similar contents to the appropriate folder. But in order not to miss an important letter, for example, an invitation to a webinar or useful free materials, you should add the sender to the white list and check the Spam folder from time to time.
Yahoo and Outlook collaborate with NSA
Mail services such as Mail.ru, Yandex.Mail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Gmail are relatively safe, but they do not properly protect the privacy of their users. It is difficult to call these services the safest mails on the Internet. Yahoo, for example, has developed special software that allows the National Security Agency to secretly check the correspondence of individual users. Google admitted during the trial that it reads emails, and with Microsoft things are even worse. As part of the PRISM project, the corporation helped the NSA keep track of Skype, Hotmail, and Outlook users.
Proton Mail: secure mail from Switzerland
A service was developed in 2013 in Switzerland by Proton Technologies, all servers are located there, which means that user data is protected by national laws. The idea belongs to student Coltech and Harvard Andy Ian. Swiss confidentiality implies ensuring maximum data security and neutrality towards users. The development company has extensive experience and has earned a good name, especially those who are interested in a high level of confidentiality like this safest mail.
The mailer is designed to double encrypt user messages. All letters are encrypted, and only the recipient has access codes. This means that the information will not fall into the hands of third parties. Proton is anonymous mail. To create an account, you need to enter personal data, but the service does not save them. In addition, developers do not store IP log entries that may be associated with the entry. At the same time, no one complained about the data transfer rate. The service has open source code. The developers claim that Proton will always be free. But those who wish can support the project with a voluntary donation or upgrade to a paid account. There are practically no differences between free and paid accounts. Mail works well and lives up to user expectations anyway.
Proton can be used on any device without the need to install additional software, but you need a stable Internet connection. Accounts are compatible with other email clients. A nice bonus is a well-designed modern design and special optimization for high performance. Outwardly, mail is somewhat reminiscent of Gmail, but it still looks very stylish and fresh. Reading, organizing and sending emails with Proton is very convenient, and even Russian-speaking users can use the Russian-language interface, which further facilitates the use of the client.
Reliable Mailfence Email
What is the best and safest mail? Mailfence service appeared in 2013 after a story about Edward Snowden and the NSA, which caused a wide public outcry. Open encryption is based on OpenPGP technology. This ensures that sent letters will not be read by anyone other than the sender or recipient of the message. In addition, thanks to IMAP or SMTP technologies, the user can access the account through any convenient email client.
The service works without ads, you can connect two-factor authentication. Mailfence is fully compatible with OpenPGP, and also offers its users the latest anti-spam technologies and blacklist senders. There is an integrated keystore. The only drawback for Russian-speaking users is the lack of a Russian-language interface.
Secure Swiss CounterMail Service
What is the safest email on the internet? The Swiss CounterMail service also (like the previous two email clients) provides double encryption, which makes it impossible for third parties to access messages. The developers used more than 4 thousand types of keys to protect user data. Data is not stored on hard drives or servers, which means that attackers cannot track emails, that is, we are not talking about the leak of confidential information.
CounterMail provides protection against government interference in privacy. But one of the drawbacks of the email client is that it will not be possible to send encrypted letters to other users, but you can chat with anyone who has email that is compatible with OpenPGP. There is no Russian interface. But there is a USB key option, applications for Android and Apple, protection against MITM.
Tutanota pass-through encryption
What is the safest mail? Tutanota mail from German developers encrypts emails with open source end-to-end encryption . Security is based on Freemium technology, which protects users' correspondence. The development of the email client is faster than other services of this kind. The company also offers paid accounts for users. Currently, more than two million active users are registered in the mail service.
Posteo Encrypted Email Service
Which email is the safest? Posteo is an encrypted mail service in German. Mail is paid, for the basic package you need to pay one euro per month. This option enables access to POP3 and IMAP support. When registering, you do not need to provide personal information, so the level of confidentiality and personal security remains at a sufficient level. There is no advertising, you can use mail on all devices. In addition, there are notes and a calendar that integrates with other clients, supports attachments of up to 50 MB, and initially 2 GB of memory for letters is available, but this amount can be increased.
VauletMail desktop software
Which mail is the most reliable and secure? The VauletMail desktop program encrypts user emails, but with SpecialDelivery technology, you can send messages to users of other email clients. VauletMail has many features. You can set the time when the message will self-destruct or send messages from anonymous addresses. True, theoretically, a program installed on a PC, rather than a browser version, is more vulnerable in the event of a loss of a computer or its loss of operability.
Enigmail Email Plugin
Enigmail is an extension for Mazila. There are similar plugins for other accounts. To get started, you need to install the corresponding extension in Thunderbird, you also need the GNU Privacy Guard program for the operating system. After the installation is complete, a new menu with the setup wizard (OpenPGP) will appear in the extension.
Using the wizard, the setup process will be quick and easy. During the configuration, the user will create or import public and private keys to ensure the security of correspondence. By default, messages are signed only by electronic signature, so that the recipient can determine the sender. To enable encryption, you need to select Encrypt This Message when writing a letter in the S \ MIME section.
The setup procedure can be difficult, because to start communication you need to exchange keys with the user. You can use the plugin in combination with other email services. Previously, you could combine mail with Gmail, but now this combination is no longer available to users.
Safety Rules
The safest mail will cease to be such if you do not follow the rules of safe work on the Internet. To maintain confidentiality for particularly important letters, it is advisable to choose mail programs where personal data (phone, other existing mailboxes) are not indicated during registration. Many users choose to work through the Tor browser, but, for example, in the case of Yandex.Mail, this is irrelevant, because you will have to constantly encounter errors, and some letters will not be sent at all.
How to choose a complex password?
The most secure email can be regular Gmail, if you pick up a strong password. A very simple and interesting way is to use a children's reader as a basis. It’s better to choose some uncommon one. The password will consist of the first letters of each word (for example: a turtle, the first letter "h", corresponds to "x" in the English layout, that is, the password symbol is the letter "x" and so on). If the letter is the first in the sentence, then write it in uppercase. Replace some letters with similar spelling numbers (“o” by 0). Do not forget about punctuation marks - periods, commas, exclamation points and question marks, dashes and colons can also be entered in the password.
According to the same scheme, you can create a password from your favorite saying or aphorism, the remembered phrase of thinkers or movie heroes. To complicate your life a bit, you can replace the letters not with the numbers they look like (for example, “h” is not 4, but 8, and so on). For a password, you can use a complex medical definition or hospital discharge. Is the term too long? You can simply throw out every second vowel letter, and write some consonants in upper case. The main thing is that you should not use password generators, because attackers use similar technologies that generate combinations to crack an account.