Encrypt Mail

[harry*333]

I'm looking for a way to have my saved emails be encrypted but still easily accessible through Apple Mail. I do not want to use file vault or any other full hard drive encryption though.

I realize there may(probably) is no solution to this but if anyone has any ideas...

 

[satcomer]

Comodo Free Email Certificate might be what you are looking for. Just remember to send secure love email the recipient has to be using your same public key.

 

[harry*333]

Not quite. I'm not concerned with encrypting emails in transmission but rather after I've sent/received and have them locally stored on my hard drive.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
[[ not concerned with encrypting emails in transmission but rather after I've sent/received and have them locally stored on my hard drive. ]]

Wouldn't FileVault do this (along with encrypting everything else)?

WARNING!
Don't use FileVault unless you're aware of the dangers if you forget your password.

It's powerful, but along with that power comes responsibility (on your part)...

 

[harry*333]

I don't want to encrypt everything though. I don't really care for 99% of my data, and for the files I do want secure I have stored in an encrypted dmg. But I can't exactly put all my mail stuff in there and still access them through the app.

 

[dyt1983]

edit: To remove personally identifying information not relevant to the thread.

 

[leman]

Just use FileVault, it will do what you need and will save you a lot of headache. Just be sure to store the recovery key somewhere safe.

 

[harry*333]

In Mail, you can create a new folder for holding encrypted items. Quit mail, then launch Disk Utility and use File -> New -> Disk Image from Folder and select your mailbox folder (~/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes/EncryptedFolderName.mbox) and use read/write and encrypted. (If you want a sparse image or to specify a size, you probably should create the image manually and copy the files, or you can just resize the image afterwards.) Then mount the image, and create a symbolic link ("ln -s <from> <to>" in Terminal) from the /Volumes/<mounted image name> to ~/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes/<folder name>.mbox

You'll have to mount the image manually before running mail, but there are several different possibilities to get it to mount when you launch mail.

I think this may be the only way to do it, just not very clean. I suppose I'll give it a try and see how reliable it is.

 

[KALLT]

I’m not sure whether that is an elegant solution. It will not encrypt your mails on the webserver, just those local copies on your Mac. If your Mac is ever compromised, it would not be all that difficult to purge these local copies and prompt Mail to download them again, unencrypted. If you’re serious about mail encryption, I suggest using a mail provider that offers S/MIME or PGP encryption. FileVault would also be a much better protection, as it will not only protect your data but will also prevent access to your device (e.g. by mounting your hard drive on another Mac). FileVault is ultimately a very convenient solution with a barely noticeable performance impact.

 

[dyt1983]

edit: To remove personally identifying information not relevant to the thread.