Security expert Schneier: In principle, e-mail cannot be secured

Recent research would show that the user-friendliness of encrypting e-mail with pgp is very disappointing. Security expert Bruce Schneier discusses the research on his blog. He recommends chat apps like Signal and OTP as an alternative.

schneier writes that he “recently concluded that email is fundamentally unsecure because encryption is not compatible with our use of email.” Here he refers to a research that was conducted by scientists at Brigham Young University.

The researchers chose to mail envelope To test. This is a Chrome plugin that works with popular webmail services and encrypts emails using pgp, a form of end-to-end encryption. Participants in the study were twenty Gmail users, who were given an hour after a short introduction to send each other an encrypted email. They were divided into pairs, the two members of which were in separate rooms.

In the end, only one of the ten couples was able to send an encrypted email. According to the researchers, this should make it clear that it is too complicated for an average person to send emails encrypted with PGP. One of the researchers’ recommendations was therefore to offer step-by-step guides to lower the threshold. According to Schneier, crypto chat apps like Signal are very easy to use by comparison.