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How To Send Email Without Leaving Any Data Traces

This article is more than 9 years old.

The unfolding revelations of government spying on private emails and communications have prompted a good deal of business for startups and bigger firms that sell tools to encrypt email to higher standards than easily available before. Such services prevent anyone intercepting a message from reading its contents -- at least anyone who does not have NSA-style computing resources and abilities to decipher a message.

But, while many encryption services and software can hide the contents of the letter, they still let others see an email's metadata, the bits of information surrounding the email such as sender, recipient, timestamp and subject message. Metadata are what allows email to be passed along the Internet to a final destination, but could reveal sensitive information such as the name of medical clinics, businesses or political parties with which one is in touch.

A new service called ShazzleMail eliminates metadata by delivering the email directly from your computer or smartphone to the recipient. It calls itself “the first privacy protective and surveillance-resistant secure email service.”

“I'm a little paranoid,” said Cliff Boyle, the founder of the Scottsdale, Ariz., startup. “I am very cautious about letting written words or data going into the cloud.”

Users download ShazzleMail software to encrypt and send messages; your computer or phone has to be to be switched on for the recipient to download the email. Overall it works most seamlessly if both sender and recipient have ShazzleMail.

Since very few people use ShazzleMail so far, most recipients will get a message with a headline reading “Secure Message from John Smith” and then message text: “John Smith has sent you a secure, encrypted email via ShazzleMail. Click to View.”

Clicking the link takes the recipient to a web page to download the message from a ShazzleMail server.

A number of other email privacy solutions have been introduced in recent weeks, including Enlocked. Last week it unveiled a new service it says offers “military-grade email security” for small businesses and professionals by encrypting a message directly on a computer or phone before it is sent.

“Since Enlocked utilizes standard email infrastructure to deliver the messages, metadata such as the sending address, recipient addresses, time/date, and a subject (optional) are visible,” said spokesman Steve Hoechster. “That said, I would not call metadata a ‘vulnerability.’  However, there are some use cases where the metadata could provide some information about the relationship between the communicating parties, and the timing of those communications.”

“If the mere existence of a communications channel between the parties is of consequence, or the timing and access methods of those interactions is potentially sensitive (these use cases generally fall into a small number of specific scenarios), then other, more cumbersome, methods of securing the channel may be warranted.”

In July, another company called Rællic Systems also introduced new software to boost communication security, allowing users to adjust among three levels of enhanced privacy, with the highest level called “Tin Foil Hat.”

In addition to boosting security, Boyle said ShazzleMail offers stronger legal protections, because if a lawsuit ever calls for copies of emails, his service leaves no evidence beyond the sender and receiver copies.

So if, for example, an opposing divorce attorney seeks to subpoena a communication, there may not be any copies they can find. “To the extent you have deleted the documents prior to the legal issues two years earlier, you don't have them,” Boyle said.

ShazzleMail started testing on a smaller group earlier this year and plans its official launch in August. It is free to consumers, as the company needs to build a network effect. It also offers an enterprise version for $5 a month.

Even with ShazzleMail, could a hacker intercept your email as the message travels directly from your computer to its final destination? “It's hard to find the messages because they don't go to a central point,” Boyle said. “There is no metadata, there is no way to track the path.”

But even his service is not a 100 percent guarantee of privacy. “It is not impossible to find if you are the NSA,” he added.  “If the NSA wants to put enough resources at it, they can do anything they want. What we do is we raise the bar substantially.”