You, too, can encrypt your email

You may not realize this, but the sort of encryption you hear about on television is available to the general public, and what's more, it's free.

Anyone emailing me is encouraged to encrypt it beforehand using PGP, linked above. A freeware version is available, and for $40 you get automatic integration with your email program in Windows or Mac OS and the ability to create encrypted disk images. Either version can encrypt individual files. (An Open Source implementation, called GPG, is also available.)

PGP uses a system of encoding called public-key cryptography in which you use someone's published key to encrypt messages to them, rather than exchanging a password beforehand. My PGP public key is available here.