Comcast Will Encrypt Email

The Wall Street Journal reports: “Comcast Corp. , the nation’s largest Internet provider by number of homes and businesses served, Tuesday said it would begin scrambling customers’ email to protect it from prying eyes.”

The move came just hours after Google called out email providers, including Comcast, for not using encryption. Google Tuesday publicized for the first time the share of its email traffic with other providers that remains encrypted. According to Google, fewer than 1% of Gmail messages sent to Comcast.net addresses remained encrypted on a sample day last month.

Google’s encryption only works if both sender and receiver are using; that’s why the company began calling out services that don’t use it. Thus Google’s “shame campaign” and Comcast’s quick response.