Threats to Email Privacy are Socio-Technological
First what is Privacy and what factors affect Email Privacy? Wikipedia defines it as “Privacy (from Latin: privatus) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively”. Privacy has a technical aspect as well as a socio-economic one, and threats to privacy can come from either of these factors. Email privacy is vulnerable to both kinds of threat.
Socio-economic factors are often driven by societal factors that include monetization needs, politics, power, culture, political systems or religions. Although these things are sometimes simply part of life, they can nonetheless be defined in terms of privacy or in terms and conditions agreements between parties. For example, free services often utilize the information of a user as part of a monetization scheme such as targeted advertisements, asking users to agree to their terms.
Socio-Economic factors affecting private email
In short, privacy in this socio-economical context may be vulnerable to:
- Data mining by service providers/storing companies for monetary benefits
- Possible future changes of terms that may compromise one’s information
- Privacy violations sometimes happening without the user’s knowledge
Technological factors affecting private email
Technological threats can stem from the technology used to maintain the claims in agreements that is often intended to secure information. Privacy violations, nonetheless, may stem from:
- Insiders (service providers/storing companies)
- Hacker attacks (users and service providers/storing companies)
- Poor passwords (users and service/providers/storing companies)
- Phishing and Social Engineering attacks (users and service providers/storing companies)
- Implementation factors and related vulnerabilities
It is important to note that email privacy violation requires only a single compromise at any time in the future.
How does EPRIVO secure emails against these threats?
EPRIVO provides sender-controlled private email with a new kind of seclusion for email privacy that is free from all the socio-technological vulnerabilities mentioned. This provision means that:
Societal threats: content cannot be exploited by a provider since complete access is impossible due to the physical separation implemented, even if digital security becomes vulnerable.
Technological threats: a compromise by a provider cannot endanger email privacy for the same reason as above.
EPRIVO performs this service for the user’s convenience!