securing website and email

[catherineteosg]

One of my friend who is a non technical person currently have a shared hosting plan. They have wordpress based website. The webhosting company also gave them 10 email address. They do not use any SSL for email. They use POP3 service and connect to outlook.

He is planning to do commodity import/ export. He was told to secure the email because in the past he was told one nigerian company scam using someone else domain send an invoice with different bank details. So when money was credited he lost.

In order to prevent such scams what precautionary measures we should take? How do we secure email? Is shared hosting with email is safe ?

Thanks

 

[Lobang.Queen]

its best to go separate with hosting and email and host your email with more reputable provider like Rackspace, Microsoft or Google Apps. They have the best uptime and redundancy than your shared hosting.

The securing email part I believe is talking about domain spoofing where scammer can forge the email sender with your domain without accessing your email client/domain. While there no 100% foolproof solution, you can minimize risk by ensuring your SPF and TXT records are up to date with your existing email provider and only allowing them to send your emails.

 

[davidktw]

One of my friend who is a non technical person currently have a shared hosting plan. They have wordpress based website. The webhosting company also gave them 10 email address. They do not use any SSL for email. They use POP3 service and connect to outlook.

He is planning to do commodity import/ export. He was told to secure the email because in the past he was told one nigerian company scam using someone else domain send an invoice with different bank details. So when money was credited he lost.

In order to prevent such scams what precautionary measures we should take? How do we secure email? Is shared hosting with email is safe ?

Thanks

What you have described is not something you can solve with technology. Securing your own email is not going to solve any problem. The problem here is on the trust with the partner. Securing your own domain using SPF or DKIM is to provide help for recipient system to trust or not trust any emails sent on behalf of your own domain. All it will do is that if your domain is not trusted for any emails that your partners received, the email will be having a good likelihood to be classified as spam and placed into the junk folder or rejected.

Safety of your emails come with numerous level and it depends on how you would consider safe. If you emails are of high confidentially, then it is not even wise to be outsourced or managed. You can choose to use S/MIME or GPG for highly secured end-point to end-point mail security, but it will quite an hassle for certificate management.

Your friend should practice more careful business transaction, validating the authenticity of the partner by calling the company up, or checking their reputation, etc.