Send Encrypted Emails In Gmail With SafeGMail

Gmail is great those who work extensively with email, and is a relatively secure email service. While there are other ways to help tighten your Gmail security, when it comes to sending emails securely from your Gmail Inbox, you might still need help from third party apps, such as SafeGmail.

SafeGmail is a Chrome extension that lets you encrypt your emails before sending them out. For your receiver to open this encrypted email, they need to give the right answer to a question you have set. It’s quite easy to use and is great for sending urgent and important messages safely to the intended receiver.

To get started, add SafeGmail then sign in to your Gmail account. To be able to use SafeGmail, you need to switch to the old compose layout first.

Click Compose to open up a new compose box. At the bottom right of the box, you will see an arrow pointing downwards. Hover over it and you will see that it’s the ‘More Options’ icon. Click on it and select ‘Switch back to old compose’.

You have to log out and sign in again to your Gmail account to start using SafeGmail.

To send encrypted emails, draft out your email like how your normally do. When you are done, look under Subject to find ‘Encrypt?’ next to a checkbox. Check the box to encrypt your email.

A question and answer form will appear. Type in your question. Choose the kind where the answer isn’t obvious or cannot be easily guessed. Enter your answer as well.

Finally, click on ‘Send+Encrypt’ to send your email.

When the receiver gets your email, he or she will see the actual content of your email, in encrypted form. Basically, it will look like a string of gibberish, non-sensical characters (see shot below). To read the email, the receiver must decrypt that string of characters.

To start the decryption, click on the ‘Here’ link as instructed in the email.

The question you have set earlier will appear. The receiver must then enter the answer to the question to access the mail decryption page.

To decrypt the email the receiver must copy the string of gibberish into the mail decryption page…

… then, paste the string of characters into the box in the mail decryption page.

Clicking on ‘Show My Mail’ will start the decryption process and reveal the contents of your email.

And there you have it, sending encrypted emails with SafeGmail is real easy as long as you can figure out how to get the answer to the receiver. You can opt for information that only you and the receiver knows, or send the password to them via another channel: via phone or SMS perhaps. Now tell us, would you give this a go?