If you’re not doing so already, you need to start exchanging encrypted emails with your contacts. Since Apple uses advanced technology to keep its devices safe, many Mac users fail to install additional cybersecurity software. However, encrypted email services are more vital than ever.
Using an encrypted mail service on your Mac will ensure that no third parties can see your messages. Instead of sending an email in plain text, your email contents will look like gibberish, so prying eyes who want to read it won’t be able to understand the contents unless they have the encryption keys to decrypt the text.
Whether you’re a journalist, activist, business owner, or simply want to exchange encrypted emails, secure email service will allow you to do so. What’s more, you can prevent spam mail and targeted ads from ending up in your inbox with email encryption.
The best encrypted email services for Mac are Tutanova, ProtonMail, PreVeil Email, and SecureMyEmail. Read on to learn about these services and how you can send encrypted emails using your existing email address on your Mac.
There are two ways to send encrypted emails on a Mac device. Firstly, you can use an encrypted email service. This is the easier option of the two since you’ll likely be able to integrate the software into your existing email client or use a dedicated app.
The second option for Mac users is that they can set up email encryption on Apple Mail. This is a lengthy process, requiring the downloading and use of certain certificates, which could confuse some users. However, if you’re interested in manually encrypting your Apple Mail app, scroll to the bottom of this article to find out how.
If you want the best email encryption service, you can choose from one of the encrypted email providers below. Read on to learn all about our top picks.
The first encrypted email service on our list is Tutanota. This service offers free and paid subscription plans and comes with native apps for various operating systems.
Tutanota uses AES-128 encryption and an RSA 2048 encryption key to ensure users can send and receive encrypted emails on their Mac devices. To ensure that contacts who don’t use Tutanota still receive encrypted email messages from you, they’ll be sent a password to encrypt and decrypt the email.
As well as encrypting the body of your message, Tutanota is fairly unique since it encrypts the subject line, contact details, and even email attachments. As well as this, all Tutanota plans come with an encrypted calendar, and even appointment reminders are encrypted.
Not only are your encrypted messages kept hidden from prying eyes, but Tutanota will also be unable to see your data. What’s more, personal information like passwords is not stored on Tutanota’s servers.
Since TutaNota is based in Germany, it enjoys the benefits of the EU’s GDPR law, meaning that your data is safe. The company won’t be handing any data from its servers to the German government.
You can forget about targeted ads or spam ending up in your inbox; Tutanota doesn’t track your IP address and web footprint to ensure that your mailbox doesn’t get spammed. Furthermore, there is an effective spam filtering feature.
With Tutanota, you can quickly start encrypting email messages using one of its dedicated clients. There are desktop clients for Windows, macOS, and Linux and apps for iOS and Android. This makes it easy to set up.
If you’re strapped for cash, then you can still enjoy the benefits of email encryption using Tutanota’s free service. Otherwise, you can upgrade to enjoy many additional features such as the use of custom domains and file storage up to 10GB. Furthermore, Tutanota is a completely green service, which is great considering the current environmental situation the planet is facing.
One of the most famous encrypted email products is ProtonMail. Based in privacy-friendly Switzerland, users can enjoy a fully private messaging system that doesn’t log their data.
ProtonMail is one of the biggest names for encrypting emails and is a leading figure in the fight for more online privacy from trackers, networks, and government agencies.
ProtonMail employs PGP for encryption, meaning that users will need to download a public key and private key when setting up the service. These will enable the user and any contacts who receive encrypted email messages to access the data in the email.
Along with ensuring that text bodies of emails are encrypted, ProtonMail offers users many useful extra features. There are custom filters that allow you to sort out your incoming mail into a relevant folder. Moreover, you can send junk emails immediately to a designated folder upon arrival.
All of ProtonMail’s servers are securely encrypted. Even in the case of a security breach, it would be unlikely that brute force encryption attacks could provide hackers with access to the servers.
ProtonMail does have access to users’ emails and cannot see anything that subscribers send. Thanks to being based in Switzerland, the company is also not forced to monitor its users’ activities and store this anywhere to share with the government, which is a great privacy advantage.
On the free tier, you must use a ProtonMail domain to enjoy the service; however, on the paid plans, you can enjoy custom domains which is great.
If you sign up for ProtonMail’s Visionary plan, then you can enjoy all of the benefits of its encrypted mail system as well as its VPN service. In that way, you can remain fully secure and private whilst online.
Another excellent email encryption service is PreVeil Email. While this email security product doesn’t offer dedicated encrypted email apps, it can be easily integrated with your existing mail client on your Mac. This means you can you needn’t create a brand new email address to use the service.
PreVail takes a zero-trust security approach, which ensures the emails you send and receive can only be seen by you and any intended recipient. There is end-to-end encryption meaning that emails are encrypted and decrypted directly on your device.
It isn’t just your email text that is encrypted; any attachments you send and receive will also be encrypted, which is great news as some other services on this list don’t offer that feature.
Moreover, you don’t need to create a strong password to use this service; it is secured using secret keys stored on your device. Additional software features include phishing email protection, with certain domains associated with spamming blocked. Moreover, no administrator has total access to the PreVeil network and its data, as the permissions are spread across several admins.
You can install the software directly into your Apple Mail and can also use it on your other devices, including iOS and Android. There is even the option to use PreVeil Email in your browser, for example, when accessing a work email account that may not be linked to your Mac.
There is a free personal PreVeil Email plan, which comes with drive and email encryption as well as 2GB of storage. There is also a secure customer portal that all subscribers can access should they have any issues with the mail software.
If you decide to purchase a paid plan, you can choose from the business or gov community plans which come with unlimited cloud storage and dedicated support for users.
SecureMyEmail is a great encrypted email solution that enables users to encrypt their current email address or download and install an app for Mac and several other clients.
With SecureMyEmail, you can enjoy many great features to ensure that your emails are always sent and received in an encrypted format. Thanks to end-to-end encryption, no third parties will be able to see the contents of your emails apart from you and the recipient, even while the emails are in transit.
You can set up the encrypted message service with your existing mail app, such as Gmail and Outlook. Alternatively, you can download the native software for Mac and use SecureMyEmail as your main messaging client on your Macbook.
Like the other leading encrypted email services on this list, you need a private and public key to encrypt and decrypt the messages you send. This ensures that no third party can see any message that you send.
A great and unique feature that SecureMyEmail offers is the option to digitally sign your email. With a digitally signed email, users can cryptographically confirm that they sent an email and assure recipients that it hasn’t been intercepted in transit.
There is a great business service, which is easy to implement and roll out to all of your employees. All emails will be encrypted between employees, customers, and partners. Not only will the email body of text be encrypted, but any attachments you send will also be encrypted.
SecureMyEmail has a free service that you can use to encrypt email messages on third-party apps. However, this won’t work for Mac users, and so you’ll need to sign up for its paid plan to enjoy SecureMyEmail on your Macbook. Fortunately, a 30-day free trial lets you test out the mail service before signing up for a paid subscription.
An encrypted email service may sound like an unnecessary option, but it is actually vital cybersecurity software. Nowadays, hackers are more adept at gaining access to users’ accounts, including email, banks, and social media accounts.
If your email address and login credentials are caught up in a breach or a hacker uses brute force to gain access to your account, all of your emails could be seen by a malicious third party. Not only this, with access to your email account, hackers could reset passwords for other accounts and take over all of your accounts.
Your email account is most likely connected to many different accounts and contains a lot of sensitive information you wouldn’t want anyone to see. Email encryption is vital nowadays, even for Mac users who may believe that their Apple computers will protect them from hacks.
By default, Apple Mail is not an encrypted email service, meaning every unencrypted email you send can potentially be viewed by a third party. However, you can add encryption to your Apple Mail and all of your messages.
If you prefer not to purchase a service from an encrypted email provider above, you can add your own encryption to your Apple Mail app. Here’s a brief outline of how to do so by using a free encryption certificate.
I’m Madeleine, and I'm a writer that specializes in cybersecurity, tech products, and all things related to the internet.
I have a keen interest in VPNs and believe that everyone deserves internet freedom and security. I wr...
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