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Question

Can you send an email with password protection?

Feb 23, 2016 9:23AM PST

Hi all,

So my mom often reads my father's emails because they share a desktop computer and used to also share an email account. I feel like this is an invasion of privacy as there are often things I specifically want to discuss ONLY with my father and don't want my mom to read. However, she won't listen to my concerns not to read my emails sent only to him and often opens them up anyways and butts into our conversation. I've asked my father to block my mom from accessing his emails altogether but he won't give in to this either.

So my questions are:
1) Is it possible to send an email to my father such that my father would have to type a in password in order to open and read it once he received it (one which I would only give to him and not my mom)?
2) If so, is there a special name or term for this type of email?
3) If so, do any of the major email providers (yahoo, gmail, hotmail, aol) offer this service?

Thanks...

Discussion is locked

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Answer
This has been kicking around for decades.
Feb 23, 2016 9:46AM PST

The problem is that it's not built into today's email apps. Now there is PGPMAIL and others but why not get your own GMAIL account and not share its password?

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Still doesn't solve the problem...
Feb 23, 2016 9:57AM PST

No, the problem isn't that my father and mother can access MY email account. The problem is that, once my father receives the emails which I send him, my mom eventually goes onto his computer and inevitably reads them.

I've asked her not to read them, but she doesn't listen. And I've asked my father to not let her read his emails, but he won't give into this request of mine because they used to share this account in the past.

Getting my own gmail account won't help, as the problem is at their end, not mine.

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No there is no solution to your problem. Why?
Feb 23, 2016 10:46AM PST

Because once it's decoded and readable it's just a copy and paste to forward them unencoded.

So in your case, there is no solution since you have a leak.

Now that you know this, keep what you need to say for the phone call and think it will leak second hand. Never write down or record what you want to keep undocumented.

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Hmmm...
Feb 23, 2016 12:10PM PST

I have no clue what the terms "decoded", "unencoded", or "leak" as I'm a fairly basic computer user but I'm getting the idea that what I'm looking for doesn't exist.

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You're getting the idea right.
Feb 23, 2016 12:56PM PST

It doesn't matter if we send a message with a password since once it's read, it's on the screen ready to be copied to someone else. This is basic secure comm theory by the way.

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Re: gmail account
Mar 3, 2016 3:16PM PST

Then you ask your father to open a gmail or outlook.com e-mailaddress. That's password protected, so if he doesn't tell your mother the password, logs out from the program when he's ready with it, and doesn't use the automatic password options in the browser, she can't read it.

Kees