The information that travels on the internet is divided into two main categories: protected ones that can only be read by the person who sends it and (not always) who receives it, those that travel without any encryption system and are always visible, in the clear, to anyone who intercepts traffic or manages the transmission servers. For example, an Email sent without encryption is visible to the administrators of the sender and recipient mailboxes and is easy to intercept with trivial packet capture software.
Conversely, if the sender and recipient Email accounts support encrypted messages, these will not be absolutely readable by external persons, not even by the manager of the Email box.
The encryption of emails, both sent and received, is very important when sending or receiving messages with sensitive information, with telephone numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, names, numbers and for any business email.
Being therefore a fundamental feature, it follows that if you are using an e-mail service without TLS encryption, you must absolutely and immediately change your mail account .
To verify that our email account supports Email encryption, you can use Gmail.
Gmail, which has always had TLS email encryption, has added an interesting feature to know immediately if the email address to which you want to send a message supports encryption .
Then try immediately, from Gmail, to write a new message by putting the address of a friend as the recipient.
If a red lock icon appears on the right side, then that address does not support encryption and the email can also be read by outsiders.
By clicking on the padlock you can read more details about the problem.
The same happens for received messages, in case the sender's address does not use an email service that supports encrypted messages.
By doing a bit of testing and looking at the messages received, you will find that almost all the main e-mail services support TLS encryption of emails, including Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail and the Italian Libero Mail.
Others do not support it and if it is not surprising that old services like Tiscali do not have encryption, it is surprising that Aruba.it's paid email service has this lack.
Other email addresses also do not support encryption such as @ fastwebnet.it, @ alice.it, or @ tin.it.
If we are using one of these unsafe services to send business or private information emails, the time has come to change your Email, Address and email account .
Gmail, in addition to reporting unencrypted mail services, has also added a way to recognize unidentified senders of received emails, which are likely spam.
If instead of the profile photo you see the question mark icon, it may be that the sender is fake and not really who he says he is.
Finally, I remember that if you want to use the email in an absolutely private way and impossible to intercept even for the police or for the best hacker in the world, there are systems to encrypt the Email to send password-protected messages
