Email is not safe for personal data

abssorb

It constantly surprises me how many professional organisations resort to denial and excuses over this most basic of data protection things.

I changed accountant this year, and I was appalled that despite me sending all my info over using encrypted methods, they sent my completed tax return to my by email as a plain PDF attachment.

 

Thankfully they handled it well when I gently objected.   But with other businesses I've often had "we've done it for ages but never had a problem" or other lame comments, and pointing out they didn't follow their own data protection policy does no good.

Any tips on how to promote good practice with the organisations we deal with?
This is good,
https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/article/6449-gdpr-security-tips-for-sending-personal-data-over-email
But more welcome

Mark_d

I vote with my feet.  If organisations don't respect my personal data then I go elsewhere.

DullGreyGuy

I'm more with Clarkson on this one... the whole data privacy thing is grossly over played and makes massive money for companies preying on peoples fears. There is a risk, naturally, but it's as a private individual it's tiny and most use a sledgehammer to crack a nut in their response to the level of risk. The majority share far more information on social media than would be of use to someone with nefarious intents in your tax return.

abssorb

The risks are only tiny from a layman's perception of how IT works.  Movies shows us a "hacker" as some geek with a keyboard tapping away, a threat we can relate to, a human with a finite attention span. 

Unfortunately it's fiction. Threats come from bots, which can make thousands of intrusion attempt per second, and never sleep. They aren't attacking your email account, or the recipients email account, they are attacking the mail servers. Think of bandits robbing the wild west mail coach. Lots of bandits.  

The second part is that people imagine email works like a fax machine, sender > recipient is a straight line. It isn't.  It goes through a considerable number of third party servers, any one of which can be compromised by malware installed by a bot.  Your email can be read on these servers by anyone who has server access, the password you type to access your inbox does not protect them in transit, they can be read like a postcard, and attachments opened.  

Most of these threats are repelled effectively, but if one gets through, you'd never know.  Just maybe 6 months later you start getting lots of PPI phone calls, or and-I-hope-not, a bank account is compromised.  And once it's out there, it's there forever.

No-one needs to spend any money to be safer, just to understand that email is a 50 year old technology which was never designed to be anything other than an electronic postcard. No-one owns email, and so it has never been improved or invested in.  Just zip your attachments with a password and it's safe enough, or send via whatsapp.

flaneurs_lobster

I recently had an exchange of documents with a large pension administration company. They sent me an encrypted PDF with a key formed of information known to us both. Worked fine but when I tried to return an encrypted PDF to the company I found the process quite complicated, involving the use of a third party's PDF utility.

I'm a retired IT techie with 40-odd years experience of bashing computers. If I found this process less than obvious then the chances of persuading "ordinary" email users of the need to encrypt their email (or, at least, the attachments) are slim.

I'd revisit something like PGP, with everyone being encouraged to share their public key in their email footers etc. Then use an email service that encrypts at a single button press. Or is there another service that does something similar.

flaneurs_lobster

abssorb said:

 Just zip your attachments with a password and it's safe enough, or send via whatsapp.

And you provide the password to the recipient how? 

debitcardmayhem

flaneurs_lobster said:

abssorb said:

 Just zip your attachments with a password and it's safe enough, or send via whatsapp.

And you provide the password to the recipient how? 

Phone, sms of course, or snail mail , or a carrier pigeon 👀

DullGreyGuy

abssorb said:

The risks are only tiny from a layman's perception of how IT works.  Movies shows us a "hacker" as some geek with a keyboard tapping away, a threat we can relate to, a human with a finite attention span. 

Unfortunately it's fiction. Threats come from bots, which can make thousands of intrusion attempt per second, and never sleep. They aren't attacking your email account, or the recipients email account, they are attacking the mail servers. Think of bandits robbing the wild west mail coach. Lots of bandits.  

The second part is that people imagine email works like a fax machine, sender > recipient is a straight line. It isn't.  It goes through a considerable number of third party servers, any one of which can be compromised by malware installed by a bot.  Your email can be read on these servers by anyone who has server access, the password you type to access your inbox does not protect them in transit, they can be read like a postcard, and attachments opened.  

Most of these threats are repelled effectively, but if one gets through, you'd never know.  Just maybe 6 months later you start getting lots of PPI phone calls, or and-I-hope-not, a bank account is compromised.  And once it's out there, it's there forever.

No-one needs to spend any money to be safer, just to understand that email is a 50 year old technology which was never designed to be anything other than an electronic postcard. No-one owns email, and so it has never been improved or invested in.  Just zip your attachments with a password and it's safe enough, or send via whatsapp.

TLS is less than a 50 year old technology but agree it's far from secure. 

You are however missing my point... so what if a bot happens to hit that 0.000001% chance of catching your tax return? 

onomatopoeia99

DullGreyGuy said:

abssorb said:

The risks are only tiny from a layman's perception of how IT works.  Movies shows us a "hacker" as some geek with a keyboard tapping away, a threat we can relate to, a human with a finite attention span. 

Unfortunately it's fiction. Threats come from bots, which can make thousands of intrusion attempt per second, and never sleep. They aren't attacking your email account, or the recipients email account, they are attacking the mail servers. Think of bandits robbing the wild west mail coach. Lots of bandits.  

The second part is that people imagine email works like a fax machine, sender > recipient is a straight line. It isn't.  It goes through a considerable number of third party servers, any one of which can be compromised by malware installed by a bot.  Your email can be read on these servers by anyone who has server access, the password you type to access your inbox does not protect them in transit, they can be read like a postcard, and attachments opened.  

Most of these threats are repelled effectively, but if one gets through, you'd never know.  Just maybe 6 months later you start getting lots of PPI phone calls, or and-I-hope-not, a bank account is compromised.  And once it's out there, it's there forever.

No-one needs to spend any money to be safer, just to understand that email is a 50 year old technology which was never designed to be anything other than an electronic postcard. No-one owns email, and so it has never been improved or invested in.  Just zip your attachments with a password and it's safe enough, or send via whatsapp.

TLS is less than a 50 year old technology but agree it's far from secure. 

TLS is secure, at least current versions are.  Did you mean SMTP? 

MattMattMattUK

flaneurs_lobster said:

abssorb said:

 Just zip your attachments with a password and it's safe enough, or send via whatsapp.

And you provide the password to the recipient how? 

It terms of work stuff, for password protected data it has to be "via another medium", for us that means that the password is communicated in a phone call, we do that because otherwise in theory a single device compromise could lead to a data breach (eg. emailed data on a laptop or phone, password sent via text/WhatsApp also on the phone or laptop). When it comes to personal data with work I am always incredibly diligent. That being said the OP is having a huge over reaction and making mountains out of salt flats. 

abssorb

DullGreyGuy said:

...

TLS is less than a 50 year old technology but agree it's far from secure. 

You are however missing my point... so what if a bot happens to hit that 0.000001% chance of catching your tax return? 

It's getting TLS end-to-end though.   

Breaches are a lot more common that people realise, and not all breaches are reported.
https://therecord.media/hackers-breach-corporate-email-servers-to-send-spam-on-employees

What can happen is anything from annoying spam to identity theft. Of course the problem with identity theft, is unlike your password and bank card, you can't cancel it and change it for a new one.  Financial loss can be addressed, but the threat will remain and continue for years.  Imagine all those phone calls you get after a car insurance claim, amplified exponentially.

If you don't believe it's real, or that the risk is tiny, that's honestly absolutely fine. I won't be able to change your mind.  

This thread is really about how to get the businesses to do what they promise.