Home » Protection Manual for Human Rights Defenders » Chapter 12: Security, communications and information technology

General tips for internet cafés and beyond

‹ A guide to safer office and information managementup

Emails sent in plain text or unencrypted across the internet can be read by many different parties, if they make the effort to do so. One of these may be your local Internet Service Provider (ISP) or any ISP through which your emails pass. An email travels through many computers to get from the sender to the recipient; it ignores geopolitical boundaries and may pass through another country’s servers even if you are sending emails within the same country.

Some general tips on issues commonly misunderstood by internet users:

  • Password-protecting a file does so little to protect the file that it is not worth doing for documents containing sensitive information. It only provides a false sense of security.
  • Zipping a file does not protect it from anyone wanting to see what is inside.
  • If you want to make sure a file or email is sent securely, use encryption (see www.privaterra.com).
  • If you want to send an email or a document securely, use encryption all the way to the final recipient. It is not good enough to send an encrypted email from a field office to New York or London or anywhere else and then have that same email forwarded unencrypted to another person.
  • The internet is global in nature. There is no difference between sending an email between two offices in Manhattan and sending an email from an internet café in South Africa to a London office computer.
  • Use encryption as often as possible, even if the email or data you are sending are not sensitive!
  • Make sure the computer you are using has virus protection software. Many viruses are written to extract information from your computer, whether it be your hard drive contents or you email files, including email address books.
  • Make sure your software is properly licensed. If you are using unlicensed software, you instantly become a software pirate instead of a human rights activist in the eyes of governments and media. The best option is to use open source software – it’s free!
  • There is no 100% secure solution if you are using the internet. Be aware that a person can “socially hack” into a system by pretending to be someone they are not on the phone or by email. Use your own judgement and common sense.
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