Send passwords by email?

In an ideal world you'd never have to share your password with anybody.

But sometimes it's almost unavoidable. If you're pulling someone in to help with an external system you may have no choice but to have them log in as you on that system.

And it can be tempting to send them the password by email. That's the easiest way.

But please don't do it.

It just leaves too many opportunities for the bad guys to get their hands on your passwords.

Here's why:

• Email is completely unprotected from eavesdropping in transit.
  
  Your email message will pass through any number of servers between the time you send it and the time it's received. That means your email can be read by anyone with access to any of those servers. Including, potentially, the bad guys who would like to abuse your systems.

• Email has a tendency to hang around.
  
  It will stay in your sent folder, and probably in the recipient's email archives, for months or years. If any of those locations is compromised, your password will be disclosed.

• Emails get copied.
  
  Your email message will often be forwarded, and copied in replies, and even sent to additional CC and BCC addresses. Every time that happens, there's another copy laying around, and more people who can see your password.

So what's the alternative?

There are a few options that will let you avoid nearly 100% of the problems mentioned above.

1. onetimesecret.com: This is a simple web-based tool that will store your message (e.g. your password) in an encrypted format, and give you a link to that message. The link will only work one time, for the first person who uses it, and it will expire entirely after some days. You can then email that link instead of emailing your password.

2. Joinery Secure Message: if you need to send a password or other sensitive information to me here at joinery, you can submit a secure message at https://my.joineryhq.com/message/. This will notify me that you’ve sent a secure message, but it will never send the message itself over email.

3. Telephone: This is not ideal, because hopefully your password is complex enough that it’s hard to read out loud, but if a telephone call is your only option, I say the inconvenience is worth it.

Here's the thing:

A password is a key into a system that you want to keep secure.

Every time you send the password by email, it's like making an actual copy of the key and giving it away … by taping it to a postcard and dropping it in the mailbox.

You probably wouldn't want 20 or 30 copies of your house key floating around in your neighborhood.

So you probably don't want to send your password by email, either.

All the best,
A.