How to send sensitive data by email
What is the main problem
Sending any kind of information via "standard" email, i.e. without end-to-end encryption (E2E), is in general insecure since all mail data can be read by attackers. Consider email as a electronic post card.
Important: Never send sensitive information in emails (neither in the subject/body nor as an unsecured attachment)
Unfortunately, to setup an E2E email is still challenging for the majority and annoying when you just want to send a single email to someone you do not correspond with regularly.
Simple workaround
In case you want to send sensitive data (e.g. credit card, personal data, etc) via email it is much easier to store all these data in one or more file(s) and send them as an encrypted attachment.
Step-by-step guidance
- If your data are already in a document (e.g. Word, Excel) you are done here. For other data just create a new TXT file and store the data.
- Locate the document(s) you would like to send in Windows File Explorer and