Which is more secure an SMS or a E-mail from a Gmail account?

[k0409964]

I would like to know which is more secure a SMS message (from my iPhone) or an e-mail from a corporate e-mail account to my Gmail account, standard not encrypted etc.

Someone wants to send their banks details to me and she thought that it was safer using an SMS, is this the case?

Can someone explain to me the pros and cons, and in as much detail as posible.

Thanks guys.

[Sharktooth]

none of them coz they're both insecure...

[kieranrk]

PGP encrypted email would be best.

[Blue_MiSfit]

I believe BlackBerry Messenger is encrypted suitably well, given the fuss that India and Saudi Arabia made about it recently :)

Of course, thats not what the OP asked, so I'm not being very helpful at all, now am I? ;)

On a more serious note, I do believe that SMS is very insecure, and shouldn't be used for this kind of thing.

Derek

[Sharktooth]

gmail is not secure by default, coz google will "index" the content of your emails.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Plain E-mail never is secure by definition! That's because even if the communication between the sender's mail client and the sender's mail server, the communication between sender's mail server and the recipient's mail server as well as the communication between the recipient's mail server and the recipient's mail client all are encrypted securely, the message still can be read as plain text at each server. This means means you'll have to trust the mail providers at least! The same applies to SMS: Even when assuming that all mobile-phone communication is encrypted securely (which it often is not!), you still have to trust the phone providers at least. Also take into account that in many countries the mail/phone provider must keep a copy of your message and provide it to the government on request.

So if you want a "secure" communication, you must assume that the communication channel (E-mail, SMS, etc.) is NOT secure at all. Which means that you must use an "end-to-end" encryption ;)

(And indeed BlackBerry is secure because they do use end-to-end encryption, at least for business customers. And that's also the reason why Saudi Arabia doesn't like BlackBerry, as there is no way to for the government to observe the communication. Not even BlackBerry themselves can do that, because they only forward encrypted data inside their own network)


PGP encrypted email would be best.

Yes, that's what I would suggest too. Still you need to convince your communication partner that your public key really belongs to you and not to some "attacker" ;)

...which again requires a "secure" communication channel, if you can't meet personally with the communication partner at least once.

[k0409964]

Thanks for all the helps guys really useful, essentially the most secure way is for my to simply phone her up really, or send it via pigeon... lol