Unsecured Email: Sensitive Info. Am I Screwed?
January 11, 2016 5:27 AM Subscribe
I sent some tax information (several years old) via regular email to a relative. Can this lead to identity theft?
My only consolation is that from my end, the email was on Hotmail which uses https and the recipient uses Gmail which also employs https. It went from one location in Canada to another location in Canada.
How severe is the danger that this email could be intercepted by a baddie and used for purposes of identity theft?
I will never send sensitive information via unsecured email again, I've learned my lesson.
My only consolation is that from my end, the email was on Hotmail which uses https and the recipient uses Gmail which also employs https. It went from one location in Canada to another location in Canada.
How severe is the danger that this email could be intercepted by a baddie and used for purposes of identity theft?
I will never send sensitive information via unsecured email again, I've learned my lesson.
I'd call this a theoretical risk unless you think either you or the recipients mail has actually been hacked.
posted by crocomancer at 5:51 AM on January 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by crocomancer at 5:51 AM on January 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
When you're using a web client to do your email, you're not exactly sending email... you're interacting with web forms. The https is enough to protect you from most of the security concerns involved in sending sensitive information. It's good enough for most banks. In other words, the email isn't being sent or retrieved using a plain text protocol, so that isn't really a factor here. It would only be an issue if you or the recipient were using a proper email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.)
More of an issue is how well-secured your Hotmail account, and the recipient's Gmail account, are. Do you both have good passwords (long, complex)? Do you use two-factor authentication if available? Have either of you ever had your account 'hacked', or otherwise compromised? If you're happy with those things, I'd say forget about it. The dangers are pretty small, especially when you consider that your email was one of billions in a sea of data at the time.
posted by pipeski at 5:52 AM on January 11, 2016
More of an issue is how well-secured your Hotmail account, and the recipient's Gmail account, are. Do you both have good passwords (long, complex)? Do you use two-factor authentication if available? Have either of you ever had your account 'hacked', or otherwise compromised? If you're happy with those things, I'd say forget about it. The dangers are pretty small, especially when you consider that your email was one of billions in a sea of data at the time.
posted by pipeski at 5:52 AM on January 11, 2016
Most of the identity crime seems to be larger quantities of theft, stealing a little from a large list of people. So you as one of millions have a lottery like chance of being a victim. So some chance but not a certainty ether way.
Now if the host is compromised it really does not matter if the transmission is secure. Then again even if you delete the email, how do you know that it was really deleted at the host?
posted by sammyo at 5:53 AM on January 11, 2016
Now if the host is compromised it really does not matter if the transmission is secure. Then again even if you delete the email, how do you know that it was really deleted at the host?
posted by sammyo at 5:53 AM on January 11, 2016
Where are the places that someone could look at this information while it was in transit?
1. you sent the email from an HTTPS endpoint, which means it reached Hotmail's servers in a secure way.
2. it was then sent between Hotmail and gmail, via whatever other intermediaries are around, in a way that may or may not be secured.
3. the recipient accessed it from an HTTPS endpoint.
The primary place it could have been accessed was on the backbone between hotmail and gmail. While there are probably some organisations who can store all that mail and sift through it for potentially-exploitable information later, they're probably also organizations that could already get that data other, less obtuse, ways.
As telegraph points out, there's a lot more risk of exploitation of the user accounts than there is the actual mail traffic.
posted by Fraxas at 5:53 AM on January 11, 2016
1. you sent the email from an HTTPS endpoint, which means it reached Hotmail's servers in a secure way.
2. it was then sent between Hotmail and gmail, via whatever other intermediaries are around, in a way that may or may not be secured.
3. the recipient accessed it from an HTTPS endpoint.
The primary place it could have been accessed was on the backbone between hotmail and gmail. While there are probably some organisations who can store all that mail and sift through it for potentially-exploitable information later, they're probably also organizations that could already get that data other, less obtuse, ways.
As telegraph points out, there's a lot more risk of exploitation of the user accounts than there is the actual mail traffic.
posted by Fraxas at 5:53 AM on January 11, 2016
https or not, you are asking about the transfer of the e-mail itself between gmail and hotmail, i.e. using SMTP. The good news is that 100% of e-mails from gmail to hotmail use TLS - i.e. they are encrypted. I would not worry.
But do delete that e-mail from your sent items and trash, and ask them to do the same from their inbox and trash.
posted by gorcha at 6:24 AM on January 11, 2016
But do delete that e-mail from your sent items and trash, and ask them to do the same from their inbox and trash.
posted by gorcha at 6:24 AM on January 11, 2016
This *could* lead to identity theft, but it's pretty unlikely. Sort of on par with not shredding your bank statements. It's not a good idea to send sensitive information through email, but millions of people do it every day (including many people who should know better), and most of the time no one notices and nothing bad happens.
posted by mskyle at 9:16 AM on January 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by mskyle at 9:16 AM on January 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
When you're using a web client to do your email, you're not exactly sending email... you're interacting with web forms. The https is enough to protect you from most of the security concerns involved in sending sensitive information. It's good enough for most banks.
As others have stated, this is practically true if sending from one best-practices major email provider to another (or internally within that provider), and in any case I'd agree that the significant danger is in the email being stored, not as it's being sent.
However, I would still never entrust personal data in an email on the grounds that "it's encrypted." You simply do not have that guarantee, you have no idea what forwarders might be automatically spewing what to where, and most people simply do not treat their emails with the kind of care that I would want.
I work in and around the IT industry, and trust me, the facade that you're dealing with a big company that should be trusted to do things right is usually just that. You never know when accounting@megainsuranceco.com includes on its forwarding route bobtheassholebosswhoinsistsonreadingcompanymailonhispersonaldevicesoweneedthisforwarder@bobtheassholebosspersonaldomain.com
posted by randomkeystrike at 9:18 AM on January 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
As others have stated, this is practically true if sending from one best-practices major email provider to another (or internally within that provider), and in any case I'd agree that the significant danger is in the email being stored, not as it's being sent.
However, I would still never entrust personal data in an email on the grounds that "it's encrypted." You simply do not have that guarantee, you have no idea what forwarders might be automatically spewing what to where, and most people simply do not treat their emails with the kind of care that I would want.
I work in and around the IT industry, and trust me, the facade that you're dealing with a big company that should be trusted to do things right is usually just that. You never know when accounting@megainsuranceco.com includes on its forwarding route bobtheassholebosswhoinsistsonreadingcompanymailonhispersonaldevicesoweneedthisforwarder@bobtheassholebosspersonaldomain.com
posted by randomkeystrike at 9:18 AM on January 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Sort of on par with not shredding your bank statements.
Excellent analogy, although modern bank statements actually contain LESS personal info that some people will send by email.
I used to do work for an IT security certification firm that would, despite our advice, send a CC number in an email to settle our invoices... yipes.
posted by randomkeystrike at 9:20 AM on January 11, 2016
Excellent analogy, although modern bank statements actually contain LESS personal info that some people will send by email.
I used to do work for an IT security certification firm that would, despite our advice, send a CC number in an email to settle our invoices... yipes.
posted by randomkeystrike at 9:20 AM on January 11, 2016
I have occasional contact with the people doing email at some of the large email services.
The largest risk in my opinion is that you or the recipient use a vulnerable password on your accounts, or get malware, either via an email attachment or an ad network in a webpage, where that malware looks for financial info on your computers.
posted by zippy at 2:57 PM on January 11, 2016
The largest risk in my opinion is that you or the recipient use a vulnerable password on your accounts, or get malware, either via an email attachment or an ad network in a webpage, where that malware looks for financial info on your computers.
posted by zippy at 2:57 PM on January 11, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
For your protection, I recommend permanently deleting the email that was sent from your Hotmail account. I'm not familiar with the current Hotmail interface but most email clients will send an item to the "trash" and then need to be deleted a second time to actually make it inaccessible (e.g. "emptying the trash").
As for the recipient, I have never seen a Gmail account compromised that used two factor authentication -- if the recipient doesn't have two factor authentication in place, they should. If they're not willing to do that, they should do as above and permanently delete the email from their account.
posted by telegraph at 5:50 AM on January 11, 2016 [1 favorite]