Secure Medical.net - HIPAA Email Rules and Regulations

Many people who use traditional e-mail systems assume the e-mail they send is private. This is simply not the case. A message sent by a user travels in plain text (i.e.. easily readable) from the originating computer to a mail server. It is stored on a server as text and subsequently forwarded from one mail server to another until it reaches the destination. Messages are stored on the servers for days, sometimes weeks and months. Most servers do daily backups, storing your messages on tapes for even longer periods of time. Once your message is sent it can be intercepted, copied and stored. You don’t know who has access to what may be your sensitive information