Vista E-mail (Service Pack 1)

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New computer running Vista 64-bit. Signing up for highspeed cable Internet. Need e-mail program but so many choices (won’t spend $100 on Outlook), need input, suggestions.

IMPORTANT: what can I use to send and receive confidential e-mails that only I can access and see; in other words something with password protection?

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Gmail is a webmail service from Google.

Pros:
– You have to provide a username and password to log in.
– You can access your e-mail wherever you are (provided you have an internet connection).

Cons:
– Your e-mails are stored on Google’s servers. Someone might hack them.
– Google scans e-mails to weed out spam and to display targeted advertisements.

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I am a bit confused by the requirement to “send and receive confidential e-mails that only I can access and see;”
Do you need to encrypt the entire email, or just a file that you are sending?
Do you need to send confidential e-mail to other people or only to yourself?

Depending on your needs, you could use just about any encryption software to encrypt your information and then send it as an attachment to an email. Obvious things to try are Winzipor the freeware version of PGP.

This question really isn’t about Vista, so when you have replied one of us may move the whole thread to another forum, but I am not yet sure if this should be in the Other Browsers & Email Clients forum or the Computer Security and Backup forum, or maybe even the Other Software Applications forum

StuartR

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Thanks for your rapid reply. I want to send confidential e-mail to others and receive confidential e-mail. Right now I’m using Earthlink dial-up and their webmail provides a group of anonymous e-addresses that I access when I go on Eartlink’s webmail. But I’ll be leaving that service when I go to cable Internet which Earthlink cannot provide.

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Bob,

Sorry to keep asking questions, but I am still struggling to understand. You said that Earthlink provide you with “a group of anonymous e-addresses”, but you then go on to say that you need to be able to send and receive confidential email to/from others.

Anonymous email addresses are NEVER associated with confidential email – as the confidentiality requires you to use some kind of encryption that you have agreed with the person at the other end.

If you want to send and receive confidential email then you have two things you need to do.

1. Configure an email client capable of sending and receiving encrypted mail. The common standard for this is S/MIME and you will need to find software that can send and receive S/MIME encrypted emails. Microsoft Outlook is one example, as is Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape Communicator and MAC OS X Mail. (I got this list of clients from http://www.marknoble.com/tutorial/smime/smime.aspx%5B/url%5D).
2. A way of securely exchanging certificates with the people you are going to communicate with. This could be by getting your mail certificates signed by a third party you both trust (for example Thawte) or you could use PGP and their web of trust.

StuartR

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STUART: Thanks for your patience — and your interest. Yes, I did confuse the issue. My focus is to have one or more anonymous e-addresses (NOT confidential encryption) to replace the anonymous e-addresses I’ll lose when I shut off Earthlink. In my new ISP I can set up multiple e-mail accounts, but not with anonymity attached.

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I have moved your question to our Other Browsers & Email Clients forum, as it isn’t specific to Windows Vista.

If you search google for “anonymous email” then you will find lots of options. Last time I looked at these I found that many of them had limitations, and none did everything I wanted, but maybe they have improved since then. Hopefully someone who has used one recently will reply here to give you some better advice.

StuartR

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Steganos Secure E-Mail is commercial software you might look at if only for curiosity’s sake (sometimes they have specials), and Stuffit and various other compression products have free software for prospective recipients. You compress and encrypt, and if they know the key and have the free decompression software they can get the message, and what’s more you can give a different key to each recipient or message, possibly based on a pre-agreed formula. If you’re using Office you can password-protect all sorts of things, but that would be weak. TrueCrypt is highly-regarded freeware.

From the description of your setup you are running high-end stuff and I don’t know if it will run 64-bit or if you qualify to buy it in the first place, but the Home and Student edition of Office both includes and costs less than Outlook alone, and the Ultimate Steal Deal (2007) post 728,705 is even less than that. If you have Office 97 or later or Works 2000 or later, you qualify to buy WordPerfect Suite at the upgrade price and their equivalent of Outlook is $30 extra and close to it. Outlook does have the disadvantage of being the main target for hackers.

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One clarification would be helpful. Most new computers have 64-bit processors but most Vista users run 32-bit Vista on them. 64-bit Vista is readily available, but non-MS software for it is not. It is more secure but I think it is also pretty exotic, and is considered high-tech stuff for most of us. I’d be a bit curious to know how many Loungers are running it and what they think of it.

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So far (one week) so good. So far I find that 64-bit Vista will accept older software (some of it years older). One blasted nuisance about Vista: those miserable PERMISSIONS.

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I’m in at about a month with 64bit Vista (Home Premium). It’s hard to tell whether performance is improved, as I also jumped from 1Gb RAM to 4Gb, and a much faster processor. I concur with the observation that there’s not much non-MS software available. I particularly rue the loss of tons of games which won’t even play in ‘compatibility’ (ie, 32 bit) mode.

In fact, the screen colours (the VIsta Aero transparency, I think) are instantly modified to Windows Basic whenever I launch either Opera, both IE7 and IE8 (latter I wouldn’t recommend yet, it is very unstable for me and crashes often) and Firefox 2xx (can’t use Ff 3x as I teach using Blackboard, which supports only Ff <3xx) . I think that this must be a 64bit issue, as it happens with both IE versions.

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Vista comes with “Windows Mail” and works just great.

What do you mean by “Password protection”?
All email accounts are password protected?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Your $100 remark rang a bell tonight, when I viewed a video about Office 2007 when it was in its preview or early release stage. Of all the versions you could buy, only three included Outlook, including two of the least expensive, which I find hard to imagine. This may vary by market, which is to say where you are located, but my version of Office certainly included it and it occurred to me that you may not have purchased or priced Office, and the packages may have changed significantly from what was once advertised. In other words, you might consider buying a suite, which will certainly cost more than $100 but which will include Outlook along with a pile of other programs you may have a use for, and which is definitely compatible with 64-bit Vista. That is just a matter of exploring options and considering tradeoffs.

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