gHacks technology news » email certificates http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:22:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Truemark Email Identification http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/11/truemark-email-identification/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/11/truemark-email-identification/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:35:33 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11134 Inexperienced users and even some experienced users have troubles identifying fake emails from legit ones. It is sometimes hard to tell if the email that just arrived in your mail inbox came from a legit company like eBay, Amazon or Citibank or if it is just another phishing attempt. There are some basic guidelines that help identify phishing emails. They are not that hard to learn, read our anti-phishing tips for pointers. Many inexperienced computer users think that it’s complicated, they prefer an easier way of telling if an email is legit or not.

Enter Truemark by Iconix. Truemark uses authentication techniques to identify more than 1500 different company email addresses including the three companies in the example above. It is backed by some of the most popular shopping and financial websites on the Internet which makes it attractive for many users. Even better is the fact that the software is free to use and compatible to several popular email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Aol Webmail but also Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007.

Another advantage of Truemark is that is it working in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox which should cover more almost 90% of the web browser market. The installation of the software will install a Browser Helper Object in Internet Explorer and an add-on in Firefox.

Truemark will automatically scan the emails in the mail inbox if the user opens a supported email client or web email client. It will display a verification icon next to the email to notify the user that the email is legit.

truemark

Moving the mouse over the icon will show an overlay with additional information about the sender and if the sender passed both identification and authentication.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/11/truemark-email-identification/feed/ 5 Identify Legit Emails from major companies http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/09/identify-legit-emails-from-major-companies/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/09/identify-legit-emails-from-major-companies/#comments Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:22:54 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/09/identify-legit-emails-from-major-companies/ Email spam is so common these days that it has become a part of our live to wade through the spam to identify the real emails that have been sent to our mail account. It can be a challenge for the average user sometimes while IT-professionals and experienced users identify legit and fake emails at a glance .

I bet you have asked yourself the question numerous times if an email was legit or fake. I know that I did and I analyzed the email to find out if the sender was really the person or company that it claimed to be.

The software Trend Micro eMail ID which I spotted over at Raymonds blog aids the user under certain circumstances. The eMail Id tool is a browser add-on for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox that supports several webmailers like Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Hotmail.

email certificate

Email ID scans incoming mails from supported companies displaying a status icon afterwards which tells the user if the email is legit or fake. Moving the mouse over the icon reveals additional information about the email received.

Trend Micro eMail ID is an easy to use security tool that does not require configuration at all. It does have some limitations though. First, it only works with Firefox and Internet Explorer and only several webmailers plus Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0 and second it supports only US companies at the moment.

If you are from Europe for instance you will not find this tool that useful because you normally do not receive that many emails from those companies from the United States.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/09/identify-legit-emails-from-major-companies/feed/ 1 Encrypt and sign all your Email traffic http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/26/encrypt-and-sign-all-your-email-traffic/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/26/encrypt-and-sign-all-your-email-traffic/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:08:45 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/26/encrypt-and-sign-all-your-email-traffic/ If you want to make sure that no one is able to eavesdrop on your mail traffic you should use encryption. The problem with most encryption services is that setting them up and talking others into setting them up as well is a problematic task. Encryption only works if both the sender and the recipient use the same service to encrypt the emails. One of the easiest ways to setup a service that encrypts your emails is the encryption software Ciphire. Ciphire is a program that is available for Windows, Linux and Mac and can be downloaded for free from the developers homepage.

how email encryption works

Before you can use the email encryption you need to generate some encryption keys for every email address that you use. Don’t worry the process is really easy and straightforward. The first email address can be added during the first start of Ciphire. The process looks like the following:

  • Enter the email address that you want to add
  • Ciphire generates RSA, DSA and ElGamal Data
  • A verification email is send to the email that you have added in the first step
  • Get new mails from your mail client (in my case Thunderbird). The verification email should be amongst the emails. Open it, wait a few seconds and the account creation switches to the next step.
  • You can either export the key if you are using Ciphire on different computers (home, work, notebook..) or finish the account creation process

certificate creation

Ciphire uses private and public key encryption. The private key is of course private and used to encrypt messages that have been encrypted by other users with your public key. This means of course that the user who is sending you encrypted emails needs your public key to encrypt them. Most encryption applications had a very complicated method of sending your public key to other users.

Ciphire on the other hand handles this task for you. Whenever you send someone an email Ciphire is automatically checking an Internet database that contains all public keys from all email addresses that are using the system. The email is also digitally signed which means that your account is protected against identity theft as well.

digital signature

The encryption and decryption process is working automatically. If you send someone a mail and Ciphire detects that the other user is also using Ciphire your email will automatically be encrypted. If you receive an encrypted mail it will be decrypted before it reaches your inbox.

This is by far the easiest way to encrypt emails. It should be noted that Ciphire only works with emails that are received and send from within an email client. If you use webmail accounts you should add them as pop3 accounts to your mail software as well to be able to send encrypted messages with them.

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