Silent Circle cofounder Jon Callas said much the same in a blog post today. "Email that uses standard Internet protocols cannot have the same security guarantees that real-time communications has," he wrote. "Email as we know it with SMTP, POP3, and IMAP cannot be secure."

Opsahl says one can still send an encrypted message over email, using programs from PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and open-source GPG, among others. These offer end-to-end encryption protection. But Opsahl says this requires both parties to have the software installed - and it's not easy. "It's hard to do, especially for those not sophisticated with encryption protocols."

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Email Privacy a Myth - To Protect Your Data, It Must Be Destroyed