Secure Email TSL/SSL Encryption

[#1]

Is it true that there is no encryption for the Plusnet email system. I cannot find any setting instructions for this on the Plusnet site and have to set my Evolution Preferences to "Use secure connection: No Encryption" for it to work. If I choose TSL or SSL then it doesn't work. With all the scamming and cracking that goes on on the Internet these days I find it quite unbelievable there are ISPs that don't do secure email. Yes the NSA and GCHQ will be snooping on everyone but I don't expect every other Tom, Dick and Harry to have complete freedom of access as well.

[#2]

Well I believe it's being looked into, though you might note the following quote is dated 2009

Quote from: Bob

Hi guys, You'll be pleased to hear that SSL on the mail collection platform should be pretty easy to implement since we put new load balancers in front of the mail platform. Speaking to our Net-Ops Team the consensus is that we just need need to enable SSL on the load balancers and offload that to the mail collection servers. Our engineers have endeavoured to take a look at this over the coming months when (if?) they have free time between project work. No guarantees as I know they've got a data centre migration to contend with during that time, but if we do get the opportunity then we'll certainly try our best to make some headway on this. It's worth noting that we probably wouldn't be able to enable this for Madasafish POP3 at the moment as we still need to migrate the POP3 collection platform over onto the Plusnet network.

[#3]

I think there's a wider piece of work to look at the email platform as a whole before too long but there's nothing in the short term to enable SSL, TLS or an equivalent I'm afraid. If you're using an unsecured connection and are worried about this sort of thing then Webmail's the way to go for the time being.

[#4]

Many thanks for the replies. I don't know much about the ins and outs of security only what I've been reading up on lately after the Snowden affair and didn't realise Plusnet was insecure. I've now notified and ammended all my contacts and am now using my Zen hosting email which is TSL/SSL and have dropped the use of my plusnet email and may jump ship completely to Zen at a later date for broadband too.

[#5]

Quote from: WhiteHorse

Many thanks for the replies. I don't know much about the ins and outs of security only what I've been reading up on lately after the Snowden affair and didn't realise Plusnet was insecure.

That's a bit of a sweeping statement. If you're connected to a trusted network e.g. you're at home on a secured wi-fi connection, then you've little to worry about. Sending/receiving Plusnet email via an email client on an untrusted network e.g. a public wi-fi hotspot does present a minimal risk. Webmail presents no risk at all and your broadband connectivity itself is as secure as the next ISP.