Emailing financial docs

[sawbonz]

I hate faxing things., especially since these days it usually involves first printing the documents so they can be faxed. It would save a lot of time/paper just to email them.

How safe is it to email sensitive financial info? I use Gmail, if that matters. And I know some things can be "faxed" directly from the computer, but I really don't want to learn how to do that.

Thanks in advance

 

[CottonEyedHorn]

Simple way would be either of the following free methods:

1) Zip the files and password protect the resulting archive.
2) PGP encrypt the files before sending. There are lots of free tools for this floating around.

Email itself is very unsafe in terms of privacy.

 

[PiGuy]

You can password protect MS Office documents and PDFs too, but the PGP advice above is good too.

 

[sawbonz]

Thanks guys. I found a free download on Tucows called Cryptainer. It seems really easy to use. Anyone have any experience w this?