How To Send an Encrypted Email In Gmail

Are you looking at how you would send an Encrypted email in Gmail? Then you are in the right place? Encryption words came from a Greek word, Cryptos. It can also be said as secret or hidden. The encrypted email service is basically used to maintain some secrecy. This kind of email is often sent by the defense to their higher officials, as it could not be shareable with anyone.

And also by some companies to the clients, so that the information that is exchanged should not be hacked by anyone.

And even if it is hacked by someone, it won’t be readable because the letters won’t be the same as sent. Keep reading this article to know what it would look like and how it cannot be readable. Here, it’s not similar to WhatsApp End to end-to-end encryption at all. For instance, if you send an encrypted email, it will be locked with a password, which can be unlocked by the receiver by only providing the correct password and following the process of decryption of the message.

Here, for sending an encrypted message, we will be using the Google Chrome Web Store.
Open Google Chrome Web Store, let’s search for the “Secure Mail For Gmail” to enable the Encrypt feature.

Once we search for it, a lot of options will be displayed in the Chrome store. Check “Extensions” from the radio button below the search box. And we will get our desired extension “Secure Mail for Gmail (by Streak)” displayed.

Now let’s add this extension to our Chrome browser by clicking on the “ADD TO CHROME” button. The Extension will be automatically added to the Chrome browser and send a notification to the browser.

How To Send Encrypted Email: Gmail Encryption

Sending an encrypted email is the safest way. As seen above, a free extension is already there for Google Chrome, so why not use it? Now let’s open our Gmail and log in to it, here we will be able to see a “Lock” next to the compose button, which was not there earlier, before adding the extension. So now we will have two options to compose an email.

Compose – To compose a normal Email
Compose(with lock) – To compose an Encrypted Email.

Though here we are trying to see how we can send an Encrypted Email, so let’s click on the lock button to send an email.

Now, once clicking on the “Lock button”, we will be able to see a different kind of Compose palette (Red color), generally it used in black color. It states that we are about to send an Encrypted Email.

Now let’s compose an Email and send it, here I am using my other Gmail for receive the email to create this tutorial. So both the emails are mine (Sender and receiver). So once done with drafting, click on the button “Send Encrypted”. Check out the image below to understand it better.

Once hitting the “Send Encrypted” button, a pop-up will open, asking for “Encryption Password” and “Password Hint”.

Type a password that should be unique, so that it cannot be hacked easily by anyone. Point to mention, the receiver can decrypt this message by providing the same password. So it is important to convey the same to the receiver. The image below can shed light on the same.

Once the password is provided, click on the “Encrypt & Send” button.

So now the encrypted email will be sent to its destination. But as earlier mentioned, it won’t be read as a lot of characters, digits, and letters will be jumbled up altogether.

And the receiver can’t read the same without decrypting the message. For decrypting the message, the receiver has to click on “Decrypt message with password“. Check the image below to see how the simple text sent was jumbled up, making it impossible to read.

Once clicking on “Decrypt message with password”, it will open up a pop-up window, asking to Decrypt the message by providing the password. As mentioned above, the password should be the same, which entered by the sender while encrypting the message.

Provide the password and click on the “Decrypt” button. And your message will be decrypted within seconds.

A message can be seen as “Message successfully decrypted!” below the subject of the email, and now it could be readable and would look like the same was composed by the sender.