Here's an EXCELLENT column on PGP and remailers: Roadside Attractions Along the Information Highway by Dave Farrell [roadside@branch.com] Your e-mail doesn't have to be for everyone's eyes Sending e-mail over the Internet can be a very convenient and efficient way to communicate. If things are working right, you can dash off a memo to a friend or colleague halfway across the world and they'll receive it within minutes. (On the other hand, I've sent off important e-mail messages into cyberspace never to hear from them again, but that's another column.) A big drawback of the e-mail, however, is that it is not private. In fact, it's a lot like mailing a postcard to a friend. Just as a lot of people handle your postcard before it gets to its final destination, your e-email mesages pass through a lot of computers before they land in the recipient's in-box. In both cases, there are plenty of opportunites for people to read your messages before they get where they're going. You may not care if someone reads the bean dip recipe you're sending to your Aunt Clara, but sensitive monthly sales reports you're emailing to your boss might be another story. While there's no way to absolutely guarantee e-mail privacy on the Net, there is a fairly simple way to make it extremely hard for prying eyes to read your messages. It's called encryption, and there's a couple of good programs available that can teach you how to encode your messages. Encryption basically involves scrambling your outgoing messages to make them unintelligible. The recipient then unscrambles them on the receiving end, converting them back into plain English. There are several encryption programs available on the Internet. I recommend you try PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. You can download a free copy of PGP from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Web site: http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html. Of course, PGP works only if you take the time to use it. To make that process easier, you should download a copy of Private Idaho, a free program that will make using PGP a point-and-click process. Private Idaho also will enable you to post anonymously to Usenet Newsgroups and do other neat tricks, such as anonymously access Web sites with your browser (you did know that you leave electronic "mouse tracks" when you visit Web sites, didn't you?) You can download a copy of Private Idaho from http://www.eskimo.com/(tilde)joelm. [retypist's note: yes, the article had "(tilde)" in place of "~"] Unfortunately for Mac users, Private Idaho is available only for Windows. If you really want to increase your Internet privacy, you might want to consider using anonymous remailers to send and receive your messages. These remailers strip your messages of your reutrn address and allow you to send e-mail that can't be easily traced back to you. There are many reamilers on the Net. Some are free, some charge. For a nice list to choose from, surf over to: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/(tilde)raph/remailer-list.html. If you're REALLY paranoid about hiding your electronic tracks, you can send your message through several anonymous remailers, which will obscure your identity over and over again. To learn more about this process, check out http://www.replay.com/staff/usura/chain.html. To save some time typing in the addresses of all the remailers you want to use, try the Community ConneXion at: http://www.c2.org/remail/by-www.html. This site will allow you to point-and-click your way through the process of selecting remailers and sending your messages. Finally, for more information about on-line privacy, visit the Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://www.epic.org.