Take Control of Your Online Privacy, 5th Edition

Improve Email Privacy

When we began discussing this book, former Take Control publisher Adam Engst told me that his rule is, “don’t write anything in email that you couldn’t stomach appearing on the front page of the New York Times.” I said I didn’t think that was a very good rule, and we discussed it (by email, naturally) in what became an increasingly contentious debate. I won’t repeat the entire exchange here, because I’m sure you’ll read it soon enough in the New York Times.

But to summarize, Adam was trying to make the point that you can never have an ironclad guarantee of privacy when it comes to email. In that respect he’s absolutely right, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. My point was that in many cases, email is the only practical ...