Email Encryption: Discovering Reasons Behind its Lack of Acceptance

Email encryption is a critical component of data security and privacy, yet many people fail to use it. Prior studies have been performed to find ways to improve existing encryption methods and to develop new ones, in the attempt of providing a program that more people will utilize. Despite these efforts, email encryption is still not widely adopted. Our study uses a survey to collect data about users’ views of email encryption and provide us with insight on why many choose not to use it. After analyzing these results, we found that this is not only due to a lack of usability of the encryption programs, but it’s also due to the fact that many people do not fully understand encryption. There is a substantial lack of knowledge of what exactly should be encrypted, how to operate encryption programs, and the many threats associated with unencrypted emails. Our results are based on the responses of thirty people answering a multiple-choice survey we designed, made up of ten questions dealing with email encryption. All survey participants came from a variety of different backgrounds and careers. To the best of our knowledge, this research study is unique and our findings represent the true viewpoints of our participants.