Last but certainly not least, there are other privacy threats besides abusive marketers, nosy bosses, spammers and scammers. Some of the threats include industrial espionage, government surveillance, identity theft, disgruntled former associates, and system crackers. Relatively easy-to-use e-mail and file encryption software is available for free, such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP, available at: http://www.pgpi.org/ ), which runs on almost all computers and even integrates seamlessly with most major e-mail software. Good encryption uses very robust secret codes that are difficult if not impossible to crack, to protect your data. Hopefully some day soon, good encryption and computer security will simply be included in all ISP services and operating systems, but for now you have to actively seek out good service providers and add-on products.
