Automatic protection

Change one setting in your mail program, and everything you send is protected from then on.

The desktop application can sit between your mail program and your provider. Your program sends to it; it signs the message — and encrypts it when your recipient can read it — then passes it on. Nothing to press, nothing to copy.

Setting it up

  1. Open the desktop application and go to Automatic protection.
  2. Press Find my settings. It works out your provider from your address, and warns you if that provider needs an app password instead of your normal one.
  3. Press Turn on automatic protection.
  4. In your mail program, change the outgoing (SMTP) server to what it shows you. Leave your address and password exactly as they are.
  5. Tick Start when I log in.

“No encryption” — is that right?

Yes. That setting describes the hop from your mail program to ProtectMyMail, which is another program on the same computer; it never touches a network. The connection onward to your provider is encrypted, and ProtectMyMail refuses to send your password to a provider that will not encrypt it.

Your password

It is never stored. Your mail program sends it on every connection, as it always did, and it is passed straight through to your provider. There is nothing on disk for anyone to steal.

If something goes wrong

Your message still goes out. If ProtectMyMail cannot protect a message for any reason — it is locked, the network is down, the message has a shape it cannot safely rewrite — it sends the original unchanged rather than holding it back. Protection is a bonus; delivering your mail is the point. The tab shows a count of anything sent unprotected, and why.

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