"Sendinc.com" – Secure Email Encryption. Simple & Easy Email Security?

While large corporations, government agencies, and other big-budget email senders have ways to encrypt their emails or at least the confidential content in it, the regular consumer is still left behind with limited ability to protect his online communication. PGP and other software providers try hard to offer good email encryption software, however, limited usability and the fact that it forces the receiving party to install software is a big reason why many people are not using it. The hassle one has to go through still outweighs the benefit.

Given that there is an obvious need for something more user friendly, we can see more and more online services allowing the encryption of emails by using a website – usually for free. Now, there’s yet another allegedly hassle-free email encryption platform, this time a bit more sophisticated than what we’ve seen before.

Send Technology allows you to write emails on their platform and sends them out on your behalf. We decided to have a closer look and were not impressed:

The interface is indeed easy-to-use and understood intuitively. After writing your email and attaching up to 10MB of data to it, you are asked to set up a free account by providing your full name, selecting a password and reconfirming your email address. This process is thorough and makes sure nobody can send emails on your behalf.

Once completed, your email is sent and the recipient receives the following notification:

Attached to the email is a little file that opens in your web browser. There you will find a link to start the “decryption process”, which simply opens another window displaying the content of your email through a secure Internet connection.

What you really get is – in fact – nothing more than a website showing you a message someone else entered there earlier. Calling it an encrypted email just because the process involves the sending of an encrypted attachment is at best an exaggeration.

What makes things worse is that with web mailers (such as Gmail or Yahoo) you first have to download the attached file before you can read the message. This brings back the hassle and I doubt that anybody would like to read his emails that way on a regular basis.

The verdict:

While the need for an easy-to-use email encryption technology is urgent and we certainly appreciate the idea of Send. to offer an innovative and easy-to-use online platform, they fail – just like the others – when it comes to application. It is still not as easy as it should be to send and receive encrypted emails on a daily basis and the fact that the attached file needs to be downloaded and stored on your computer before you can see the content makes it hard to believe that this will be the new way of how people are going to communicate.

Furthermore, anybody who has access to your email account and gets a hold of the encrypted file can theoretically decrypt it without any sort of authorization, since the site only verifies your identity by sending a confirmation email, not by use of a password. This means that your data is securely encrypted while it’s being sent but not once it has arrived.

Alternatives:

A similar solution to the one reviewed above is Stegnos FreeCrypt, which just like Send. is also available online. Unlike Send. it does not encrypt attachments and it does not send out an email for you. Steganos FreeCrypt allows you to convert your messages into encrypted content by the use of a password. You can then send that data in a regular email knowing that only the person in posession of the password wil be able to read it. Again, this is nothing you would use for all your emails but it’s a nice and easy way to send out a secret message.

Try it out yourself by decrypting the following text using the password “AtCa2%cpi”:

IwGod2nniEM59QVK3GTMAN1Hw1RQekmYpLj5Y2/vo6JecvkXfaU26DiLA/1s99im
IdZXJY9hbmN8qksqYI7lLt/bvcnTBEWtZOj2ObMnYprDJIlcLK3YqSz4GrQXRJR/
T3bT8hdKDv2Vcyt+6CsqKB/Ha9zVhxE2deTIQaQo8IAatb/sZqpzihyTTRKbfq2Y
DEye4TTmJAct0Mxek3z/WA==

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Related links:

• Steganos FreeCrypt (Requires you to open a free account)

• Send. Inc

• Original Press Release, published by PRWeb.com