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Old December 29th, 2011, 02:50 PM
Da Friendly Puter Tech Da Friendly Puter Tech is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 60
Default Re: ethical ramifications of e-mail

Hey Monica,

I think that there is one technical step you ought to take. A firewall and virus protection does not offer enough protection on it's own. Its a solid start - but there is no such thing as 100% virus protection on the market. I would get some encryption software and encrypt any files that contains confidential information. This way should malicious software get on your computer, or should your computer be stolen those files cannot be accessed.

There is one more risk with email that I think your client should be aware of. This risk is minimal, but not completely unlikely. When you send out email the mail itself passes through several servers - for one email to get to its destination the email will typically pass between 3 - 15 servers. At each server the email sits on that computer unprotected. Server administrators can, and has occasionally read private emails. This is indeed not a large risk - most likely the person would have no clue who your client is, or not even live near to you. Admin's also rarely read emails as a routine thing - but it happens. This is why sending credit card information via email is highly unsafe unless the file is encrypted.

Malene
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