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[[Image:Email-servers.png]]
Note the two globes in the above diagram. Those globes represent the Internet that your emails travel through in order to be received by an e-mail recipient. The '''smaller globe (the one your workstation is connected to) cannot be trusted to send mail messages unencrypted'''. The '''larger globe usually involves inter-ISP traffic, often through an internet trunk line, so it is also unencrypted, but it cannot be easily accessed by hackers, pen-testers, or evildoers'''.
There are '''two important general truths you need to understand about email encryption''':
:* Email (the way the vast majority of people use it) travels from SMTP server to SMTP server uncencrypted. That means that nothing sent over email is ever truly secure. But intercepting SMTP server to SMTP server traffic is difficult and expensive, not worth doing for the little bit of money most of us have in our bank account.