After 40 years, email is finally getting changed — a bit!

The killer app that has just never changed

Introduction

Most people have their embarrassing stories of email, where they replied to a distribution list incorrectly or where they including the wrong recipient. In a post-GDPR era, email just has too many risks to continue as it is.

It is the application that made the Internet, but increasingly it can be seen as the child that hasn’t grown up.

So, in 1982, after the classics of IP and TCP, came Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) with RFC 821 and then, in 1992, we saw the standardisation of POP-3 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1725), and two years later with IMAP 4 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1731).

Since then little has really changed, with tunnelling being developed with SMTPs, IMAPs, and POP3s, and where the transmission of the email is protected. Once the email is out of the tunnel, it is unprotected and can be read by anyone with administrator access. Today, too, we still receive spam emails from users pretending to be someone else, and where our emails are open to those with administrative access to our email. Very little in email can be trusted, as it can be easily modified and read by those who were not meant to access it.

Email grows up — a bit

In a GDPR era, email just carries too many risks to continue on as it is. If you’re an academic, and you…