Chapter 6
RMail Inbox

RMail Inbox has it all, and any­one can use it. It’s a secure email ser­vice (using auto­mat­ic SSL/TLS encryp­tion), and it’s also an email pro­gram. It works through your Web brows­er. The URL (Web address) is Inbox​.RMail​.com which takes you to the RMail Inbox login. You can eas­i­ly access this robust email pro­gram. Just book­mark it in your brows­er, and click (tap) on the book­mark when­ev­er you want to use it.

RMail Inbox is a secure email ser­vice. It auto­mat­i­cal­ly encrypts all of your email between the RMail Inbox email pro­gram (inter­face) and the RMail email serv­er and then on to the recipient’s email serv­er.

RMail Inbox is a com­plete and free email ser­vice. Your email ser­vice provider is RMail. You have an RMail email address, such as JoannaFilmore@​RMail.​com. And you use the RMail Inbox email pro­gram to send, receive, and man­age your email.

You’ll find the RMail Inbox email pro­gram sim­i­lar to oth­er email pro­grams you may have used, and the sys­tem works sim­i­lar to oth­er email ser­vices. Plus, it has all the addi­tion­al RMail secure ser­vices built-in ready to use:

• Reg­is­tered Email
• Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion
• E-sign
• Large­Mail trans­fer

Although the email ser­vice itself is free, RMail will charge you for using addi­tion­al indi­vid­ual RMail ser­vices, such as Reg­is­tered Email. Check the pric­ing at RMail​.com. The use of the first five RMail ser­vices each month is free.

How Does It Work?

How does RMail Inbox work? It auto­mat­i­cal­ly encrypts your email between your RMail Inbox pro­gram and the RMail email serv­er. Any­one who inter­cepts your email at the var­i­ous vul­ner­a­ble points between your email pro­gram and the RMail email serv­er will not be able to read your email.

SSL/TLS  RMail uses Secure Sock­et Lay­er (SSL) and Trans­port Lay­er Secu­ri­ty (TLS) to encrypt your email. This may keep your email secure until it reach­es the recipient’s email serv­er. (See Fatal Flaws in Chap­ter 5.)

Once your mes­sage leaves the RMail Inbox email serv­er, it goes out across the inter­net with thou­sands of oth­er email mes­sages and arrives at your recipient’s email serv­er. And after it leaves the recipient’s email serv­er, you have no fur­ther con­trol over your email mes­sage. Con­se­quent­ly, your email mes­sage is like­ly to trav­el unen­crypt­ed between your recipient’s email serv­er and your recipient’s email pro­gram.

Not Com­plete­ly Secure  This is not 100% secu­ri­ty. Your mes­sage trav­els over the inter­net from your email serv­er to the recipient’s email serv­er encrypt­ed. But few peo­ple sub­scribe to a secure email ser­vice (Gmail except­ed). Thus, the chances of a recip­i­ent hav­ing secure email is low. (The chances of a recip­i­ent even know­ing whether he has secure email ser­vice or not is even low­er.) Assum­ing the recip­i­ent does not have secure email, your email mes­sage trav­els from the recipient’s email serv­er to the recipient’s email pro­gram unen­crypt­ed.

If your recip­i­ent does have secure email ser­vice, how­ev­er, your email sys­tem and the recipient’s email sys­tem will con­nect secure­ly, and your mes­sage will trav­el secure­ly over the entire email path. This capa­bil­i­ty is part of SSL/TSL; that is, sep­a­rate TSL email servers will rec­og­nize each other’s use of TLS and trans­mit to each oth­er secure­ly; and email servers may con­nect to email pro­grams with SSL secu­ri­ty depend­ing on the set­tings of the pro­grams. But read about Fatal Flaws in Chap­ter 5.

What Can You Do for Greater Security?

First, by using RMail Inbox email ser­vice, you have a back­up. If TLS fails between your email serv­er and the recipient’s email serv­er, RMail auto­mat­i­cal­ly defaults to Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion. This is a prime con­sid­er­a­tion. In oth­er words, if RMail can­not get your email mes­sage as far as the recipient’s email serv­er encrypt­ed, it reverts auto­mat­i­cal­ly to Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion to pro­tect your secu­ri­ty. You can’t ask for more than that. Or can you?

Sec­ond, indeed you can. You can always elect to use Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion for a mes­sage, which encrypts your mes­sage and pro­vides secure trans­mis­sion all the way to the recip­i­ent. Think of this as a ser­vice you invoke man­u­al­ly for spe­cial mes­sages that require the high­est secu­ri­ty.

More­over, you can elect to use Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion for all your email mes­sages. The default set­ting is off, but you can change the set­ting to on so that every mes­sage has Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion. Keep in mind, how­ev­er, when you do this that you will incur the RMail charge for Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion for every mes­sage.

An Advertisement for RMail Services

The RMail Inbox email ser­vice works much the same as any oth­er email you have used. The RMail Inbox pro­gram has lots of famil­iar fea­tures, such as a spam fil­ter that dumps spam into a fold­er labeled Junk. What’s unique about the RMail Inbox email pro­gram is that it has a menu that gives you ready access to RMail ser­vices. From this con­ve­nient menu, you can elect to use RMail Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion, Reg­is­tered Email, E-sign, and Large­Mail trans­fer. The RMail Inbox email pro­gram also gives you mul­ti­ple options for using each ser­vice, which enables you to use them with con­sid­er­able flex­i­bil­i­ty.

As of the writ­ing of this book, those who use RMail Inbox email ser­vice get five free uses of RMail ser­vices each month. For the use of the sixth ser­vice and there­after in any month, RMail will bill you for its fee. Note that the fees charged are nom­i­nal, and there is no set month­ly charge. You pay only for what you use. Like any oth­er free email ser­vice, RMail takes care of every­thing: pro­gram­ming, updates, sys­tem main­te­nance, sys­tem soft­ware and any­thing else it takes to run an email ser­vice.

Enhanced Security

What are some of the pos­si­bil­i­ties for using this sys­tem? One pos­si­bil­i­ty is for you to get your impor­tant recip­i­ents to use RMail Inbox email ser­vice. That way you have auto­mat­ic encryp­tion from one end of the email path to the oth­er. For some peo­ple in busi­ness, that’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty. For most, it’s unlike­ly that you can get all your impor­tant recipient’s to use RMail Inbox email ser­vice. But it’s an idea to keep in mind.

Anoth­er way you can use RMail Inbox email ser­vice is to have every­one in your busi­ness use it. It is, in effect, not only an email ser­vice but a ful­ly encrypt­ed inner-office memo sys­tem. All the emails going back and forth between you and the peo­ple in your busi­ness (in your home or office) can com­mu­ni­cate with­out wor­ry­ing about exter­nal hack­ers.

If Everyone Uses RMail, the Email Path Is Secure

Final­ly, if you put togeth­er a work­group or a col­lab­o­ra­tion group of peo­ple in your office and out­side your office, you can require that they all use the RMail Inbox email ser­vice to com­mu­ni­cate with­in the group. Again, keep in mind that in the RMail Inbox secure email sys­tem the encryp­tion is auto­mat­ic. You won’t have to wor­ry about whether email mes­sages are secure or not (except when stored on email servers).

Gmail  Gmail is a secure email ser­vice. This means that a per­son using Gmail has encryp­tion, at least as far as the Gmail email serv­er, but only if they use both the Gmail pro­gram and the Gmail ser­vice. Con­se­quent­ly, when a Gmail user, sends a mes­sage to a recip­i­ent who is also a Gmail pro­gram and Gmail ser­vice user, the mes­sage is encrypt­ed entire path of the email mes­sage. Like­wise, when an RMail Inbox user sends an email mes­sage to a recip­i­ent using the Gmail pro­gram and Gmail ser­vice, the mes­sage remains encrypt­ed for the full path of the email mes­sage. More­over, when a Gmail pro­gram and ser­vice user sends a mes­sage to a recip­i­ent using Rmail Inbox, the mes­sage remains encrypt­ed for the full path of the email mes­sage. Note that some peo­ple who use Gmail don’t use the Gmail pro­gram, and the Gmail secu­ri­ty may not work com­plete­ly. Also, see Fatal Flaws in Chap­ter 5, how­ev­er, for the lim­i­ta­tions of such secure trans­mis­sions.

Security Breaches

What about sub­tle secu­ri­ty breach­es as out­lined in Chap­ter 17? With RMail Inbox email ser­vice you don’t have to wor­ry about that. RMail does not data mine the email mes­sages that pass through the RMail email serv­er. In oth­er words, it does not use its cus­tomer data or cus­tomer mes­sage con­tent for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es as do many oth­er free email ser­vices such as Gmail (Google).

There is a fur­ther added ben­e­fit of using RMail Inbox. The email serv­er is in Ger­many. This means that it’s going to be a lit­tle bit more dif­fi­cult for gov­ern­ment agen­cies or lit­i­gants (peo­ple who sue you) to sub­poe­na your email, assum­ing you’re an Amer­i­can.

Legal Acces­si­bil­i­ty  The legal acces­si­bil­i­ty to records out­side the bor­ders of the Unit­ed States is a mat­ter to be decid­ed by the state courts or the Unit­ed States courts accord­ing to many fac­tors includ­ing statutes and court rules. It’s also a mat­ter to be decid­ed by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, which has strict laws regard­ing pri­va­cy. There are some cas­es in some juris­dic­tions (for either civ­il or crim­i­nal lit­i­ga­tion) that your email mes­sages resid­ing on an email serv­er out­side the Unit­ed States may make legal acces­si­bil­i­ty more dif­fi­cult. This book does not pre­tend to set forth a legal opin­ion on this issue. For cer­tain­ty in your par­tic­u­lar case, you should con­sult an attor­ney.

Although most RMail Inbox email ser­vice users will nev­er be both­ered by gov­ern­ment agen­cies or lit­i­gants, it’s nice to know that you have some extra pro­tec­tion should you be the sub­ject of some adverse legal pro­ce­dure.

For large offices with enter­prise net­works, RMail Inbox does not have to be an inflex­i­ble email sys­tem. RMail will work with a com­pa­ny on a cus­tom basis to pro­vide off-the-shelf cus­tom fea­tures that suit the company’s busi­ness process­es. In oth­er words, you can have a cus­tom secure email ser­vice that fits your busi­ness while at the same time it pro­vides a sub­stan­tial amount of cost-effec­tive secu­ri­ty.

Extra Features

RMail Inbox has the nor­mal email capa­bil­i­ty of author­ing text with a selec­tion of type­set­ting con­trols. And it has three addi­tion­al pow­er­ful fea­tures that you may find handy:

• Text tem­plates and the capa­bil­i­ty to cre­ate your own tem­plates.
• A spread­sheet pro­gram for build­ing spread­sheets right in an email mes­sage.
• A pre­sen­ta­tion author­ing pro­gram, pre­sen­ta­tion tem­plates, and the capa­bil­i­ty to cre­ate your own tem­plates.

If you haven’t used such fea­tures yet, try them out. You may find that they make your work eas­i­er and save you time. Note that these three fea­tures are not includ­ed in RMail Web (cov­ered in Chap­ter 7).

Bottom Line

In an era when hack­ers are attack­ing almost every­one on the inter­net with many famous suc­cess­es, RMail Inbox email ser­vice (with con­ve­nient access to addi­tion­al RMail ser­vices) pro­vides you with a series of reli­able defens­es whether you’re one per­son or a large orga­ni­za­tion.