3 ways to keep your emails private
In a shocking recent news story, CIA Director David Petraeus stepped down from his position after an FBI investigation revealed his extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, his biographer. The information was actually obtained indirectly by using location data from Gmail.
Everything we do online is linked in some fashion, but there are ways to keep your communications untraceable. I found this shocking article, How CIA Director David Petraeus’ Emails Were Traced (and How to Protect Yourself), and I knew I had to share it with you. I think you’ll find it very interesting.
If you want to keep your communications private, it’s important to learn about the lapses in security that can make public what you think is private. Three tips for keeping your emails private and untraceable are:
- Hide your IP address. A VPN (virtual private network) service such as Hamachi will work on its own, assuming it does not give up your IP address, but added security is web proxy Privoxy. It’s important to use the VPN every time you log into your email for this to work.
- Use disposable email addresses on both ends of the conversation. These addresses self-destruct after an email is read. Another option is to make sure you don’t use the same provider to send email messages that you don’t want linked. That’s what got Paula Broadwell in trouble.
- Keep all of your private stuff offline. If privacy is crucial, don’t put the information in an email. Stick with text messages.
Have you ever used any of those three methods for keeping your communications private? How have they worked out for you? What other strategies do you employ to keep your emails from being traced? Hope to hear from you about this.
Take a look at https://tails.boum.org/
This appears to be good option for private internet/email access. Please let us know if there is a down-side to using Tails.
Thanks!
The downside to small, new, programs like this is that you are trusting the programming ability of one (or two) people. You might have found a fledgling program that is fantastic, or it could be completely worthless. Technical privacy is not my area of expertise. Anyone out there better equipped to evaluate their code?
All of these methods are good for email. I avoid email for sensitive information. Pigeon Holing is a far better method. Put the info in a hole and some one else comes along and retrieves it; No public or email system exposure. Combine anonymous connection with VPN and encryption. Simple method is to put up a message (no names to or from in it) is to an ftp location, drop box, share file like location. Even use news posting or bulletin board for one way notifications. Do not use .txt, .csv .dat or .eml extensions; be creative.
I use the free GNU Privacy Assistant when I really want to keep something private. The difficult part is convincing other people to set up their own system so you can exchange security keys. Still, trusting in God remains the best advice. I don’t know of any government who can outmaneuver God’s stealth plan.
Your remarks are dead-on. Unfortunately, rain falls on the just and unjust. Obama’s failures are going to smack us even though we know that there is coming a day when God is going to exact a price for this.
So, much for that silly 4th Amendment!
FOURTH AMENDMENT AMENDMENT IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment
If they want your communications, they will get it. Make it difficult and costly to do so.
Watch the 2008 movie “Traitor” with Don Cheadle. It has a teaching moment there that you should be able to pick up on and implement with whatever group you wish to communicate with. Watch for it and learn. E-Mails can be intercepted only when sent.
Keeping your emails secure may be the least of your worries soon. I just watched a youtube, where a man described a convoy of 3 diesel trucks unloading at a military base in Illinois. They were loaded, front to back & top to bottom, with new signs reading “We are now under martial law.”The govt. did not order these without expecting to use them. It’s just a matter of time.
(another Charles)
Have been closely monitoring similar events, and have known about such activities for quite a few years. Be prepared. Survival Foods and Water are the most important. Just saying…….. Bug-out-Bags are wonderful to have, but are not necessarily something you would have a chance to grab and run with. Your own home could be the safest place to stay. Again, just saying……
This hole thing is about to blow up.To hell with e mail it time to start grtting out the way. We need to start planding were to go and how to stay alive. Not how to gard an email.We need a safe place to live away from fema and all the nuts out there so lets work on food ammo water and helping one another get ready time is short and you know it .time to roch and rool.let me hear from you it not about making money any more its about staying alive.
Blog post, voter registration, facebook, twitter, tex messages, bank statements, web sites we visit, churches we belong to and political parties we donate to,…Emails? Who are we trying to kid??? They KNOW us already. Perhaps we should go back the the Pony Express. When SHTF…We will all be on their hit list because we are Patriots. Patriots are opposed to the New World Order and Agenda 21. Hitler had a hit list also. We all know how it ends.
I agree with part of the privacy for emails. But text messaging can also be traced. Better to talk face to face if you can.
TIME TO LOOK FOR INTEGRITY NEIGHBORS TO FILL THE SPOTS OF OUR NEW GOVERNMENTS; NATION AND STATE. WE WILL LITERALLY TURN OFF THE PRESENT JUNK SYSTEM AND USHER/DEPORT THE OLD AND LAUD IN THE NEW. EVERYBODY STUDY THE DECLARATION AND CONSTITUTION PLUS, BE VERY SAVY IN YOUR PRAYERS.
Frank … 500 documents of mine associated with NWO, etc have been removed from my computer, probably my emails too! I may be “cooked” and so may you!
The best way to avoid problems is to live your life knowing that our Creator God knows everything we do and don’t do, so live a transparent life and you will never be ashamed or worried about your private communications.
its not about integrity before God, although i totally agree, but they are calling us terrorists b/c we support the constitution, gun rights, are Christians, voted for Ron Paul, oppose gay marriage, abortion, etc. It is a matter of protecting ourselves, not about living with integrity, as this group of evil has none.
These are not tricks and they will not stop your communications from being monitored. If you truly want to stop all e-mail monitoring it requires point to point, encrypted e-mail communications. Which means you must have your own server and the clients of that server must have the same encryption software.
The government system searches for key words, phrases, and locations, in order to select e-mail it wishes to capture and review. So it would take ones on enigma to convert words and phrases into something the government filter observes as harmless communication, an algorithmic feet which most of use do not posses the knowledge nor the time to screw around with. Remember two Chechen college students, one of which was on the FBI watch list, and which communicated boldly online, and where the US government was warned by the Russians, were simply ignored by the US government as a credible threat. This can only have one of four conclusions;
1) either the government knowingly allowed the Boston Bombing to occur in order to gain politically, by allowing a crisis event to occur. There were a vast amount of special forces on the scene during the event, so they were looking for someone
or
2) they are so focused on other, non critical events or key political groups, that they simply missed the obvious signs
or
3) the agencies are so disorganized and limited by the personal wants of the heads of each agency, that they don’t communicate with each other or with the White House.
4) Inter agency distrust is rampant within the various Obama administration departments and therefore information sharing is kept to a minimum. The media release which indicates Mr Obama does not include cabinet members in meetings, would suggest with strong evidence, that this is the more likely scenario. A house divided can not stand and the Boston Bombings are a testament to that fact.
If you want to keep your e-mail private, the simplest thing is to have your mail client download all of your mail to your computer so a copy of that mail is not left on the ISP’s server. If you are really concerned, place a computer in your network which is grabbing your e-mail from the isp server every few minutes. Using a e-mail service which does not track is the best solution to assuring your e-mail is completely removed from the server. Most people are not involved in criminal activity and simply wish to keep their communications private, therefore using the solution above and simply moving your important e-mail to an encrypted USB drive should be more than sufficient for retaining and securing, those e-mails you wish to keep.
On the surface this all sounds good, but actually…any
email provider can recapture email that you’ve downloaded from their server to
your local PC. This is possible through backups and native capability of email
servers (such as Exchange 2010). And whoever you send email to, or receive
email from, has the same problem. So even though I run my own email server, the
party on the other end of the conversation is open to exploitation.
The only way to truly keep your email private is to have
both sides run their own email server (or better yet you run both), to encrypt
the connection with your own root certificate (your own private root CA server)
and then to encrypt the connection with those certs. And then have all machines
that access that server completely secured as well. But even then that
connection could be recorded by any ISP in the communications path, reassembled
and eventually have the encryption cracked. Though that would take a lot of
resources, one of which is time; so effectively this should work for the common
person who isn’t being targeted.
Everything that goes through the air is captured by DHS, email, text, phone calls…..EVERYTHING. There is no more 4th Amendment. Now, whether they have enough folks to read or listen to all communications is another story. So, you can encrypt your communications but I believe that civilians are only allowed 256 bit encryption, so if the government wants to read or listen to your communications, they can.
where do you get Hamachi?
“stick with text messages”
Lol, really man? Maybe you should look into that a little bit more.
How are text messages private?