On: FBI wants real-time Gmail, Dropbox spying power

[booruguru]

If someone wants their e-mail to be truly private and secure what options are available?

[jazzyb → booruguru]

Use PGP to encrypt your emails[1]. I've never used it with any server I didn't control (like Gmail), but I'm sure it's possible to set up.

[1] http://lifehacker.com/180878/how-to-encrypt-your-email

[chimeracoder → jazzyb]

Google will never include PGP support in their official web client, because it kills their advertising model (which requires them to have access to the plain text of your emails).

However, as long as Gmail supports IMAP, it's pretty easy to set up PGP encryption/signing with Thunderbird or Mutt or the like. Thunderbird has a plugin/extension for integrating support, and Mutt provides it natively.

If you already use Thunderbird or Mutt, it'll take maybe 15 minutes to set up, and then you don't have to think twice about it.