Sue from Gettysburg, PA asks:
I need to email my social security number to my insurance company, but I’m hesitant to send sensitive information into cyberspace. Is there a secure way to email this to them?
It’s very smart of you to question the action of emailing information that could leave you vulnerable to hacking or identity theft. There is a great service called OneShar.es that can provide you with a solution to your situation.
OneShar.es is a free online service that allows you to create a secure message for one recipient and it even has a self-destruct feature for all you Mission Impossible fans out there!
Simply go to their website, https://oneshar.es/, click the blue “Create One Now” button and type your message in the box, you have up to 1000 characters to use. Then click the blue “Create Link” button. The service will encrypt the message and provide you with a unique URL that you can share with the recipient by copying and pasting it into an email.
Since the content of your message is encrypted immediately and stored encrypted, no one other than your intended recipient, including OneShar.es, is able to read your information. After the recipient visits your private URL, the information is unlocked for them only and the message is deleted. If you try to access the URL a second time, you will receive the following error message:
Sorry 🙁 That URL has already been retrieved and it’s no longer available
How cool is that?
You can even select the amount of time you want the message to be available to the receiver before it self-destructs, there are options ranging from 30 minutes to 3 days until…boom! No more message…
OneShar.es is able to maintain this level of security by using HTTPS (SSL; Port 443) to encrypt the data from your web browser to their servers. The data is stored encrypted and the message is deleted from their system after it is viewed.
For more information on data security and other IT questions and issues, contact Teltek IT today! We can ensure that your information stays secure!
Teltek is proud to offer IT services as the fourth component to our multi-systems approach as your single source technology services company. This Managed Service Provider (MSP) offering completes our longstanding goal to provide our clients with a one-call resource for all of their business technology needs. IT outsourcing, remote back up and disaster recovery, helpdesk support, computer network relocations, security products, computer repair and server/desktop virtualization are just a few of the services now available.
Do you have a question for the Teltek Tekspert? Email it to us and we’d be happy to find the answer for you!