How Private is Net Counseling?

We have all read the warnings. Never use your credit card on the net unless you are using a secure server. Never send your credit card by email. So should you send your personal problems by email?

There are several important issues involved here. Email privacy is protected by law in the United States and some other countries while it is (briefly) traveling over the internet. There is a small possibility that someone could intercept it along the way, just as there is a possibility that a telephone conversation might be overheard, or a postcard read by a postal worker. A bigger potential threat to email privacy occurs when the email sits on your computer. Courts have ruled that your employer can read your email if you are using the company's computer network.

While a few programs exist which encrypt and decrypt email, the most commonly used is Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). The newest versions make it easier to encrypt and decrypt email. The freeware version of PGP is not quite as user-friendly, but it is free.  MIT distributes it to U.S citizens.

PGP uses a technique called "public key encryption" to provide email security and to allow "digital signatures" on email. Each person has a public key and a private key. You use your private key to digitally sign messages (so the receiver knows that it is really you that sent it) and to decrypt messages sent to you. Your public key is displayed for others to use. They encrypt all messages they send to you with your public key. A PGP public key that I once used is:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0
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=IjWJ
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

In the past you could use this to send me encrypted email, and you could include your public key of you want an encrypted reply. (I no longer have the software to decrypt this, so please don't send me a PGP message and expect a reply!)

If all this is too complicated, the following rules will help insure your privacy:

• Avoid using your work email address to send and receive personal information.
  
• Print any unencrypted personal email (or save to a diskette) as soon as you receive it, then delete the files from your hard drive.
  
• If you are communicating with a counselor by email, begin by sending a brief email of a sentence or two to verify that the right person is receiving it. They will reply if they want to work with you.
  
• Always double-check the address you are sending to, and be sure to include a valid return address. This is especially important if you are sending from a computer which is not your own.

These steps will minimize the chance that your email will be read by anyone else.

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