Yahoo’s plan to get Mail users to encrypt their e-mail: Make it simple

Keeping your e-mail messages super private can be a pain. Most free e-mail providers automatically provide SSL encryption for Web mail users -- meaning data can be seen by the service, as well as the senders and recipients of messages. But end-to-end encryption, a feature which locks up message contents so that only the sender and receiver can read them, can be a much more cumbersome process for e-mail, often involving specialized software and looking up encryption keys. The whole thing can be so tricky that very few people actually use it -- or if they do, it's used only for the most sensitive of messages. But in the wake of reports from Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency's access to data held by tech giants, many of those companies have pursued technological solutions to shore up customers trust, including an expansion of end-to-end encryption. Google announced in June that it was working on a Chrome plug-in to provide end-to-end for Gmail users. Yahoo, too, is working on end-to-end.

In August, Yahoo announced that the company would release its own version of the plug-in for all Yahoo Mail users in 2015 -- and it will work with Google's plug-in, which matters because both sides of an exchange need to be on board for end-to-end to work. Given the sizable user base of Gmail and the billion-plus Mail users Yahoo claims, that could mean a lot more people who will suddenly have an easier way to communicate more securely. Yahoo isn't ready to roll out its end-to-end plug-in to users just yet, but it is releasing the code behind the plug-in for public review and hopes for a launch by the end of 2015. The company also showed off its plans for new authentication features, including additional ways to verify user identities using push notifications in mobile apps and codes sent via text message. Like Yahoo's end-to-end efforts, these features remain in development. The long-term goal was to transition its users away from passwords in favor of more secure options -- a vision shared by other tech companies.