how do i password protect email
attachments
hi everyone leo notenboom here for
askleo.com let's get right to the
question
i need to send a document to someone but
it needs to be secure
i don't see an option in my email to add
a password
but certainly there must be there
somewhere what am i missing
so what you're looking for honestly it's
not that unreasonable
unfortunately it just doesn't exist
it you may say it must be there
somewhere and i wish it were there
somewhere
but it's not there actually is no part
of the standard email protocol
that calls out the ability to encrypt
an attachment independently of the
entire email message
and even then email encryption itself
is extremely complicated mostly due to
lack of standards
and mostly due to i don't know i guess
i'd call it a lack of interest by email
providers
only because it becomes incredibly
difficult to interact with all the other
email programs and all the other email
providers doing it their own unique way
there are solutions they're just not the
solutions you're really asking about
what you're looking for is something
along the lines of
you attach your document to an email you
ask your email program to encrypt
the attachment and then you hit send
like i said that doesn't exist you can't
do that
what you can do is what i call flipping
the script
in other words you encrypt your document
you attach the document to your email
and you hit send it's conceptually very
simple
but it does require one
little bit of coordination that works
like
this you and your recipient
need to agree on what kind of encryption
is going to be used
and you then somehow need to share
the decryption key with your recipient
ideally through some other means by that
i mean
you don't email them the password to
your encrypted file
because that's going down the same path
that the encrypted attachment was that
means that if your email has been
compromised you've now given the
compromiser
both the encrypted attachment and the
encryption password
what i typically do in a case like this
is if i'm going to send an encrypted
document to someone
i'll do that through email but then i
will
text them the password or use an instant
messaging client
to get them the password but some other
approach to getting them the decryption
key that will allow them to
decrypt the attachment that needs the
security
we've decided it needs that
ultimately is the simplest
solution it's a little cumbersome but it
is the simplest solution that works
across
pretty much all platforms and all email
programs
which encryption do you want to use well
there again it kind of sort of depends
my recommendation is to use something
simple like
zip you may need to use a program like
winzip or 7-zip to
create your file with a password if you
use
7-zip make sure you use the z-ip
format and not 7-zips native.7z
format it's the dot zip file format that
is basically compatible across almost
every platform
and that includes decrypting it if you
open a password-protected zip file under
windows in windows file explorer
it'll ask you for the password that's
all you need
so that's the way that i would suggest
doing this now there is
one other solution that especially if
this is something you do
often or just plan to invest a little
bit more
into and that is use a different email
provider
specifically protonmail protonmail is
effectively built around encryption
if you send email from one protonmail
user to another
that email if you mark it as such is
encrypted
and it literally is just hit a checkbox
that email is encrypted before it's sent
and it's decrypted when it arrives if
you
are sending to a non-protonmail
user you can then encrypt the entire
mail
again with a checkbox but this time
when you send your email what actually
gets
sent is a link to the recipient
who on clicking the link is then
prompted for a password
that you've provided again via some
other channel
that then allows them to read your
message and download your attachments
through protonmail's web interface
it's probably the simplest solution of
all
if you're willing to change email
providers but if not
zip up what it is you want use a
password when you zip it
and then just attach the zip file and
send it on
that works and works well it's not quite
as streamlined as what you're looking
for
but it solves the problem for links
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132-656 i'm leo notenboom
this is askleo.com thanks for watching
you