Email Security Question(s)?

Before I ask - I would like to state for the record that I am not very good with IT terminology and request that you bare with my verbiage - LOL


I also request answers from hands on pro Techie's only (please)





1) What is encryption - what is it's function/purpose and how do you get it for email?





2) Also - what is it called - when you are required to match up symbols (kind of like an authentication process) to send an email or information? What is it's function/purpose and how can you get this for a personal computer (I know they use it for purchases or signing into certain things)





I much appreciate the answers to these questions ;))) Muah!


Thanks
Email Security Question(s)?
In your verbiage it would be little tough to explain but will give my best shot.





Encryption- This is basically sending a message to your friend eve without your enemy Adam being able to know what that message is . The way it works is Take a message , Take a password , Run some "Algorithms" {Usually the software does it for you its simply a series of logical steps} and we get a new message which only a person with the password can understand .





How do you get it for email, use PGP Google it and you'll get it.





Captcha- Remember when you tried to register for yahoo you had to type some weird letters and number displayed in a pic. Well now if it was not there , some evil minded programmer would write a program to automatically register all combinations of yahoo ids and there will be no way you'll get your favorite Aunnika@yahoo.com he he.





So to prevent such programs or BOTS from taking away all user names captcha is used , It can rarely help you in your day to day life .





2nd Part: Well I don't use yahoo mail so don't know exactly if that is a feature of yahoo. But in general such things are used to avoid spams too.


SPAMS: mails sent by some bad bad fellows to a huge list of email addresses which they get by different means for advertisement.


e.g- insurance , loans , viagra etc mails that keep coming to inbox from unknown senders.





Most probably what had happened was that your account was mistaken to be a spammers account by yahoo due to activities like large number of mails or other such automatic conditions that they put so it was just verifying that you indeed are a human , when after 5-6 times it realized that you indeed are a human ... it stopped asking he he. :)


.... On second thought I did some research and guess what I'm absolutely right ;)





check these links that i got on a google search





http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/09...





http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...





So its simple there are ppl who write programs to send mails to a large number of ppl and such programs cannot read images like humans so yahoo simply checks that you indeed are a human and allows you to send mails so nice of yahoo. No need to worry at all . Hope that answers all your question .
Reply:Hello,





Below are the answers for your questions,





1. Encryption is a process of interpreting messages in other form which humans cant understand. To read the messages which are encrypted, we need to decrypt the message. The main purpose is for security. As you might have used shopping carts which uses encryption for transactions. The most widely used program for encryption is GPG(http://www.gnupg.org/)





2. When you want to send email, say from your Yahoo account, first you need to authenticate to yahoo to send emails. Authentication is for avoiding relying emails.





If you want to use these services in your local computer you can use email clients like Thunderbird, Outlook Express or MS Outlook
Reply:1) encryption: hiding something in something else





2) captcha: you do not need this for a personal computer


its to sop robots on the net stealing your information, as its a picture they cannot read it or type it in.






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