Secure Email Reviews – Most Secure Providers and Services in 2024

More people are starting to look into secure email given the recent hash of hacks in the news. This has caused people to leave the likes of Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook for more secure email providers. One of the reasons for this is that these email providers scan their users’ email for advertising information.

They have also been known to provide governments access to email accounts. If you are becoming increasingly interested in keeping your private details private, then you would probably like to know what the most secure emails providers are. This article aims to highlight them and why they are secure. Let’s begin.

Before we begin, it is important to know that we tested numerous solutions, comparing and ranking them according to our review process in order to come to answer the question, what is the most secure email provider?.

Choosing the best secure email service

Understanding which is the best secure email is never easy. When doing so we have to search for secure email providers that have good service. It is also important that they have the very best features that grab the attention, as customers want a lot more than just security. The best safe email providers are ones we consider secure. To this end, we took a deep dive into each and every email server to provide an answer to the question; what is the most secure emails provider.

Jurisdiction

The country where the best secure emails are located is one of the most important criteria to consider once you decide you want to make our data and emails more secure. And this applies not only to the best secure email provider but also to security tools like VPNs. The country where your provider operates determines how sensitive user information is handled and where data is physically stored. The best secure email provider is based in countries that do not hinder every user’s right to online privacy.

The jurisdiction of a server never used to be a feature most considered when they were searching for the best secure email providers or secure emails providers. This was at least until it was known to the world that the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Britain and Australia cooperated to share intelligence information about their citizens. This information was collated from the servers situated within their jurisdictions.

This is quite alarming for anyone that’s looking to protect their data and information by choosing the most secure emails providers or safe email providers. Some nations typically do not go through the legal process to obtain this private data. Additionally, countries such as the US have particularly anti-user laws where companies are obligated to hand over backdoor access to their servers.

Nevertheless, there are nations around the world that not only respect but fight for user data security. A few of these nations that  have favourable privacy laws are Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland.

PGP

Support for PGP cryptographic software is still much discussed to date, and each provider sees the issue a little differently. Among other criteria, we have also evaluated the ability to support this type of encryption or other similar solutions that can make your emails more secure.

Ability to import emails

We all know how convenient it is to have everything we need in one place. For this reason, we have also considered the possibility of importing your emails from different providers such as Outlook and Gmail. Simply put better secure emails and fewer passwords.

Two-factor authentication

Two factor authentication provides an additional security layer to your email. This ensures that if your password gets cracked, it automatically becomes useless making the entire hacking process much more difficult.

A two factor authentication works with something that you know such as a password and username, this is the first factor. The second factor is something that you have such as a backup key or mobile phone.

You can implement two factor authentication in quite a number of varying methods, however, the most prevalent method used today is the one time token. This usually happens by signing on to a program, software or product that requires you to enter a token that can only be used once. This token is unique and is sent to the server. A famous example of this signing up on the Google app or getting a code to log into your twitter account. This method ensures that your unique token is not leaked, neither is it continually used to gain access. Additionally, it can also be used to help you recover your account should you lose access to it.

Support for third-party apps

Because of encryption, the best secure emails don’t always ensure that apps work for managing the third-party email box. But the best secure email provider should offer dedicated apps that can easily solve this problem.

Encryption

In order to comprehend end to end encryption, you first have to understand what encryption is. Encryption is a method of obscuring data. This means nay website that has https in its URL utilises SSL or Secure Socket Layer to ensure data sent over the internet from your PC to the site’s server is secure. Using SSL avails to your computer a way to guarantee that the information sent and received is encrypted. Most of the websites visited today regularly enables SSL to protect their users from having their information such as passwords stolen.

This same process is utilised with email data. When you send an email via an encrypted network, it means that your plain text information in the email is scrambled, so much so that it is impossible to decipher without having an encryption key which acts like a passcode.

The encryption used in today’s world is so good at protecting the information that it could take millions of computers working for 16 million years before they could crack the encryption. However, regular email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail simply encrypt the email while it travels from your end to their servers. Once it gets to the other side, your email can be simply read. When you use such an email service, you have to somehow trust that they wouldn’t use the available encryption keys to read your mail. You also have to be at alert that your encryption keys wouldn’t get stolen by hackers.

With end to end encryption, the control is placed in the user’s hand. This means when you load your inbox using the most secure email provider or safe email providers, you would first have to get a private key unique only to your account. The key is essentially unhackable, and has to be used to decrypt your email content. This process is something that happens automatically in the background.

Extra Features

There are extra features like calendars, reminders, address books, and storage spaces that we don’t want to give up. The best secure emails know how convenient these features are to their users and make sure to include them in their platform.

Security

Each secure email provider has several security standards and protocols that it adheres to. We make sure that only the best secure emails that apply them to become part of our recommendations.

Privacy

How do these providers manage to protect users’ privacy? It’s a question we always keep in mind when looking for the best secure emails for your privacy.

Why you should use secure emails

Securing your emails can be a great way to keep everyone but the most dedicated nefarious agents from reading your private information. You could also utilise a personal email certificate that enables you to append a digital signature to your email so that the recipients can tell that it’s from you. A personal email can also encrypt your emails so that only the intended recipient can read it. You can get a free certificate from Comodo and other programs like it. All it takes is to you filling out a basic registration form.

Another reason for using personal email certificates is that they can act as gatekeepers to your account, holding back things such as malware and spam. This stops them from getting distributed in your name. When your family and friends are conditioned to understand that only messages that have been digitally signed come from you, they know that an unsigned message that has your email address is most likely a fake and they can delete it to protect their user data.

Most secure email providers or safe email providers typically promise to ensure that your emails are safe from snoopers and also protect you from numerous threats like Trojans and Viruses. However, there are those that claim to offer this service for free. This should make you wonder, how exactly are they able to offer their services for free?

What some of these providers do is offer their user data to third parties for a price. This in turn creates a serious security issue to their users. It is always best to stay away from any of these companies that claim to be the most secure email providers for free. It is best to stick with transparent parties as they are the most secure email providers or most secure emails providers available. The most secure email provider is one that never asks you for your user data simply to use the site.

Another reason to secure your emails is the issue of PGP flaws. PGP for a very long time was the cryptographic standard for secure email providers. Most secure email providers or safe email providers offer it via plugins and extensions. So if you are looking for the most secure email provider 2024 or safe email providers you might want to steer clear of encrypted email services that utilise PGP.

The vulnerabilities were discovered in 2018 when a website known as EFAIL highlighted the vulnerabilities it had found in S/MIME and OpenPGP. This meant that encrypted emails and plaintexts could be linked. The entire security community was awash with permutations and guesses.

After all of this, it turns out that the underlying technology which PGP was built on was sound. The issue actually lay in how the technology was implemented. What this means is that the tools created by companies, particularly encrypted email services were not as well designed as the creators believed they were. This issue is particularly true when the development of the encrypted message and email servers are mentioned.

Conclusion

If you are interested in sending encrypted messages using secure email services, you are going to require encrypted email services. Additionally, if you are searching for an email server that does all this for free, it is going to be hard to find such an email server. Providing strong end to end encrypted email services is not something that most secure email providers offer right of the bat.

The great news is that you can be sure that most secure email providers have no interest to read your emails for marketing purposes like the likes of Google. It is important that when searching for the safe email providers, you should steer clear of those that state they offer encryption at no cost to you.

This is because these so-called safe email providers are likely to monetise your user data as a way to pay for the service they supposedly offer you for free. When searching for the most secure email providers, always select the ones that offer encryption in return for payment. This payment could be either via a subscription plan or a one-time fee.