Adopting the Cypto Lifestyle: two ways to encrypt your communications

Crypto Lifestyle

If you have a Steemit account, you are already using crypto-currencies with Steem. Most users of Steemit already know quite a bit about crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. In addition to crypto-currencies, there are more uses for cryptography. The primary use in the past has been for communicating privately.

We choose to publicly post here on Steemit, but sometimes private communication is needed. Being in control of your communications is an element of the Crypto Lifestyle.

Secure your communications

I've been thinking about the best way to privately communicate with people. Regular email isn't a good choice, as by default email is very insecure.

I like the Telegram messenger, but it isn't encrypted by default and uses your phone number as an identifier so it isn't very private. I did some research and found a messenger app called "wire". It looks really good because you don't need to use your phone number as an identifier and it can be used both from a mobile device and a desktop computer.

However, in order to sign up for an account with the wire app without a phone number, you need an email address.

ProtonMail

I chose to open a completely separate email that is not connected in any way with my previous email addresses. Here's info from their website.

No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first.

I also wanted email with security features. ProtonMail is a free email service that provides encrypted communications between two ProtonMail email addresses. But you can also use it just like normal email to communicate with other email addresses without encrypted messaging. All messages received and stored on ProtonMail are encrypted and not able to be viewed by anyone else.

All emails are secured automatically with end-to-end encryption. This means even we cannot decrypt and read your emails. As a result, your encrypted emails cannot be shared with third parties.

The Inbox design is easy to understand and use. I haven't used it much, because of how recently I signed up.

Use the ProtonMail address to sign up for other services

Once I had my ProtonMail address, I used that to sign up for the wire app. My username for the app is the same as my Steemit username. Feel free to message me - @matthewdavid - and our messages are encrypted end-to-end when using the wire app.

Overall, I'm very happy with the crypto-communications technology that is available. Both ProtonMail and the wire app have additional features available for paying customers, but the basic accounts are free!

Here's links to their websites:

• https://protonmail.com/
• https://wire.com/

I encourage you to begin to use crypto-communications tech, if you haven't already. Talk to you friends and family about it. It's a good thing if regular people use it for their everyday communications.