By Aston Fallen

The personal computer has never been more personal. Consider email, and the things people choose to write and the files they choose to attach. People routinely trust email systems with their private correspondence, diary entries, secrets and gossip, addresses, household budget details, holiday snaps, and in some cases even their bank details.

In fact, it could be said that our emails provide a unique portrait of our most private personal lives.

Although social networking sites are rapidly catching up with email for some of these types of communication, email remains the correspondence mechanism of choice, as well as the one with the broadest reach. But what email users tend to forget is that it is intrinsically insecure.

There is software that can encrypt email and browser favorites to protect users from revealing details of their daily lives to potential intruders. This software is inexpensive and easy to use. 

More surprising still is the number of companies that don't insist that their employees use encryption software. The result is that sensitive business information, such as business plans, product development roadmaps and other secrets are all too frequently freely exchanged via email.

Here are Steganos’ Top 3 Tips for people who want to practice safe emailing from home and work:

1. Be virus-smart: viruses will often pretend to be legitimate emails sent by your friends and family. Don't open unexpected attachments, or you could find your computer is compromised and all the data on it can be exploited. Make sure you keep your anti-virus software up to date as well—new viruses are being written every day, so you need to be vigilant.
2. Don't feed the phish: ‘phishing’ is when hackers send email messages impersonating a bank or online retailer to try to persuade you to enter your details at a fake site. To be safe, don't click links in emails. Go to your bank's Web site by opening your browser and typing in the address. Anti-phishing software can help warn you about fake Web sites.
3. Shred it: Make sure that any data you no longer need is irretrievably destroyed using dedicated shredder software. Deleting a file on your PC only hides it from view and it can be recovered until other files have overwritten it. Take particular care before disposing of your computer or giving it away. Even if you've put everything in the recycle bin and emptied it, whoever ends up owning your hard drive could recover all your secrets.

By Aston Fallen, managing director, Steganos