Secure Your Email Using Putty Software

Privacy issues pertain to sending email. While email providers offer acquire webmail solutions, many may also offer POP or SMTP servers for programs like Outlook, Eudora or Thunderbird. When downloading email using these programs, our personal information can be exposed to anyone ‘listening’ to our connection. For instance, private information conveyed in an email would not be encrypted through an HTTP connection, and for the paranoid, this can mean pain.

There are many online solutions, even anonymous email accounts, for users to cloak identity. But for those wishing to secure their connection to email, Putty offers a simple solution. Putty is a free SSH client that connects users with a server, lsuch as a Linux machine. If you have a Linux server with SSH running, Putty can effect a secure connection and then tunnel specific ports to the remote Linux server. This can effectively secure your email transmissions and shield you from abuse.

Putty software can be downloaded from: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html.

Putty is a simple .exe file that can sit on your desktop. When you first open the application, it asks for Hostname and Port number. It defaults to port 22, which is commonly the SSH port on Linux servers. Once that information has been entered, select the Tunnels option on the options tree on the left. It is located under the SSH header. Click this option, and a new dialog appears in the main window.

How to add a novel tunnel to Putty

1. Click the Tunnels option under the Header SSH on the left side tree.

2. Enter the source port you wish to forward. For email, 110 and another separate entry for 25.

3. Enter a destination, like mail.yahoo.com:110.

4. Click the Add button.

5. Go back to the top of the tree, then select Session.

6. Choose to save the session, by clicking the Save button.

7. When you originate Putty in the future, the saved session should be visible. Double-click it to tunnel using the same settings.

8. Double click the saved session, then log into your Linux server. To finalize the tunnel, the settings in Outlook, Eudora, or Thunderbird for that email record need to be localhost for incoming or outgoing mail.

Putty’s tunneling only works with a shell account on a Linux or Windows server. There are free shell services on the internet. To receive a free shell account, you can visit FreeShell.org.

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