The Internet has radically changed the way we communicate with each other. Email is obviously an extremely valuable and ubiquitous form of communication, but with this technology comes certain pitfalls that should be understood. The path that an email message takes . . .
The Internet has radically changed the way we communicate with each other. Email is obviously an extremely valuable and ubiquitous form of communication, but with this technology comes certain pitfalls that should be understood. The path that an email message takes to reach its recipient is a complex and varying one, and while in transit that message may come under the potential scrutiny of numerous different people and organizations.

We will attempt to outline the varying paths that an email message may travel, and who some of those different people and organizations might be under whose scrutiny the message may pass. The intention of the document is not to provide a how-to guide; the only specific technique that will be discussed, packet sniffing, is one that anybody with any technical networking knowledge whatsoever is already familiar with - which brings us to an important point. At a round number, there are probably at least a million people in the world with the requisite technical knowledge necessary to intercept Internet-based email. Yes, I said a million. (There are actually probably a lot more than that - maybe several million by now, and more everyday as the populace becomes more networking-literate.) Fortunately, the number of those people who actually have the physical access necessary to intercept email is much smaller, but it is still a very large number.

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