Before the era of private email (or even email for that matter), classic spy films like Mission Impossible and James Bond often depicted private and secure communication as being a high-tech government device, hidden in the  brief case of an agent that would get them up to speed on the latest secret mission.

While having a brief case send you secret messages and then self-destruct in 15 minutes sounds pretty cool, private email technology today goes a step further by allowing users to communicate with one another privately over the Internet, without having to worry about their sensitive information being compromised. PrivacyHarbor.com email, for example, protects your email from spam, viruses, scams and invasions of privacy. Whether you are getting briefed for a secret mission, sending a resume to a prospective employer, emailing a significant other, or sending sensitive documents to your lawyer, PrivacyHarbor.com keeps your information private and secure with secure web servers and additional privacy features.

Common email providers like Gmail, Hotmail and YMail may offer free email, but often it comes at a price. For example, the common email inbox below is filled with a mixture of unopened email messages from friends, membership websites and potential spammers. From first glance, it’s hard to tell which of these email messages are legitimate communications versus unwanted messages that could contain spam, scams or viruses.

Sorting Out Common Email -

With PrivacyHarbor, sorting out and deleting unwanted email messages is easy. Simply click on the “SnapGuard” tab at the top of your account. Once in the SnapGuard folder, you can view all of your new, unopened emails. These could be emails sent from legitimate sources that you haven’t yet been in contact with or emails sent from potential spammers, scammers and hackers. SnapGuard helps you to safely review these new emails to approve, discard, or mark them as spam without having to worry about viruses, scams or unwanted advertisements hitting your inbox.

SnapGuard -

In addition to SnapGuard, PrivacyHarbor email is sent and received using private, SSL secured web servers, requiring that all users login and that all unregistered users follow a secure process for entering PrivacyHarbor.com to safely view their private email. This provides an additional layer of privacy and security for both senders and recipients of PrivacyHarbor.com messages.

My prediction for the next Mission Impossible and James Bond films: the secret agents toss out their old self-destructing brief cases and instead login to private email on their computers. Not only will they have more than 15 minutes to read their messages, but they can now save their sensitive communications and read them later using private and secure email at PrivacyHarbor.com.

We at PrivacyHarbor.com are pleased to announce that we have just released the first edition of our quarterly newsletter.  In it, you will find the latest information about privacy, our PrivacyHarbor.com service and PrivacyHarbor, Inc.

We would love to hear what you think. Please let us know what you like, do not like, and what you would want to see us add next time. We read all comments, and our newsletter, like our service, is built upon your feedback.  If you wish to subscribe, please visit us at PrivacyHarbor.com and then enter your email in the newsletter subscription area of our homepage.

We also invite everyone to visit us at www.PrivacyHarbor.com today, and see how easy it is to send and receive private email. We are your advocate in protecting your Internet communications, and we encourage everyone to take back your privacy with PrivacyHarbor.com.

Over the past six months or so there has been a lot of positive buzz surrounding PrivacyHarbor.com and our private email platform. We are thrilled that tens of thousands of people have subscribed to our service over that short period of time and the feedback has been very positive. With this initial success comes a lot of responsibility, and we are busier than ever listening to your comments and suggestions in order to continually enhance our service.

Our company is all about providing private Internet communications for everyone. By saying “everyone,” we are indeed saying that consumers and small businesses finally have a viable solution for private and secure email. We, and our subscribers, believe that we have created a solution for private email that is easy to use and inexpensive. In fact, we even offer a free, private email account.

So the question remains, why did we build a product for consumers and small businesses where so many others focus on the large Fortune 500 companies? The answer is simple; we believe that privacy is a right, even on the Internet. Most people already expect privacy in all other forms of communications, but may not think it is possible on the Internet. Advertisers, hackers and identity thieves have used this popular assumption to their benefit over the years and, as a result, there are now major problems such as spam, identity theft and unwanted target advertising.

All the major corporations on the Internet, including Google, Yahoo and Facebook make the vast majority of their money through advertising.  Privacy simply gets in the way of their business model, which is based on exploiting user information in order to provide targeted advertisements. At PrivacyHarbor, we have a different business model. We make money the old fashion way, by respecting our subscribers and the people they are communicating with, and by providing a great service. We are in the privacy business – not the advertising business.

We encourage everyone to visit us on www.PrivacyHarbor.com today, try private email and let us know what you think. Our services are being built on your feedback. You now have an advocate to protect your Internet communications and we encourage everyone to take back their privacy with PrivacyHarbor.com.

It’s that time of year when online purchases peak and many people are working with their financial advisers to review the past year and plan for the coming one. The Internet has become a convenient and standard tool for exchanging financial information, and email is now a staple in this online exchange of information. Unfortunately, email is routinely targeted by online scammers, hackers and identity thieves snooping for financial information.

Becoming aware of these online threats is the first step toward reducing your risks online. According to Identity Theft Fixes, each year approximately 10 million Americans become victims to identity theft. Of these individuals, an average of $1,800 to $14,000 is lost. Moreover, victims spend an average of 840 to 1,300 hours each year to resolve identity theft issues with their credit report and personal information.

Here are five steps you can take to help ensure your financial information is protected:

1) Keep security software active and up-to-date. Anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall protection can only combat new threats if the software is current. Set your security software to update automatically, and periodically scan your computer for viruses and spyware.

2) Make sure your OS and Web browser are current. Operating system companies issue security patches to repair flaws in their systems. Set your operating system and Web browser to automatically download and install these critical security patches.

3) Use private email to protect your information. Common email is exposed to spam, identity theft, and phishing scams to name a few. Using a private email service like PrivacyHarbor.com to send private and secure email ensures that your information is kept safe.

4) Password-protect your financial information. If you keep financial information stored on an electronic device, be sure to password-protect the information in case of theft. Do not store the passwords in the laptop or device.

5) Back-up your information. When you have important financial information stored on your computer, be sure to store the information externally on a flash drive, removable disk or external hard drive.

Taking proactive steps to protect your financial information will ensure a safer online experience. Contact us to learn more about how PrivacyHarbor.com can help protect your personal information during this busy financial season and secure it throughout the new year.

We are kicking off two special contest events this month that will offer Twitter and Facebook users a chance to win 12 free months of a private and secure, Executive email account.

Starting Tuesday, November 3, we will launch PrivacyHarbor’s Retweet Tuesdays on Twitter! Every Tuesday through December 11, check the PrivacyHarbor Twitter page at noon Pacific Time and retweet the specified message by Friday, 11:59 PM Pacific Time of that week for a chance to win one free year of a PrivacyHarbor Executive account!

We are also offering a chance to win one free year of an Executive account to new and existing fans of PrivacyHarbor on Facebook! Go to the PrivacyHarbor Facebook page, log on to Facebook and click “Become a fan” by Friday, December 11. Already a PrivacyHarbor Facebook fan? Current fans can win too if they refer a friend to become a fan of PrivacyHarbor’s Facebook page! A winner will be selected randomly on Friday, December 11.

Note: PrivacyHarbor employees, family members and vendors are not eligible to win the Retweet Tuesdays or Facebook Fans contests.

Best of luck to everyone and remember, the only way to win is to play!

August 2009 was a big month for us here at PrivacyHarbor.com and one that will not be forgotten anytime soon. Why you ask? Well, to start, we officially launched both our new website www.PrivacyHarbor.com and our new look and feel of our private email service. The response has been fantastic, and the number of new customers in search of true email privacy has been astounding. As a team, we’re thrilled to be able to help our customers achieve private email dialogue. That being said, it is important to us that PrivacyHarbor.com meets your email needs. We ask you to tell us what you want in a private email service by completing our new survey!

The survey will take approximately four to six minutes to complete (really, we timed it!). We want to provide you with an ideal user experience, and would appreciate your important feedback. To thank you for taking our survey, you’ll  receive three free months service to our Personal or Executive Account memberships.

All existing customers will get the survey as a link in an email that you will receive over the next couple of days. Part of the survey asks questions about how you would improve PrivacyHarbor.com email. As a result, if you are not currently a customer, you would need to register for and account and then the survey will immediately be emailed to you.  Please note that the survey is designed for all types of respondents, regardless of your user level. Of course, the survey is anonymous, private and secure.

As always, please contact us with any questions or to learn more about PrivacyHarbor.

Today, the PrivacyHarbor team released our new Beacon Desktop Email Notifier, now available for download. This new feature will alert users via a small pop-up window on their desktop when they receive a new e-mail message, regardless of whether they are logged into their PrivacyHarbor email account.

The new Beacon Desktop Notifier is free for all accounts and includes the following features:

• Beacon Icon Status – Unique icons in your system tray will show you when you are online and have new messages, or are offline and have no new messages.

• Inbox Beacon Message Preview – When the Beacon is active, you will receive a notice informing you when new messages have arrived in your inbox.

• SnapGuard Beacon Message Preview – You will also be notified of new messages in SnapGuard. By default, you will be notified twice a day about messages from unknown recipients that go into SnapGuard.

• Compatible with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista (Please note that Mac OS X is currently unsupported).

To learn more about PrivacyHarbor or to sign-up for PrivacyHarbor email account, simply follow the links or contact us at support@privacyharbor.com.

As always, we love to hear from our customers! Feel free to let us know what you think of the new Beacon Desktop Notifier.

I bet when the BBC’s television comedy series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus first came out with their 1970 “SPAM Sketch” they had no idea just how far the comedy bit would go and how popular the term “spam” would become in encapsulating all that is now unholy and relentless in the world of unsolicited, bulk electronic messaging. Today, you can almost hear those same Vikings drowning out our emails, chat room conversations and forum posts with the sound of “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam” every time you receive an unwanted advertisement about male enhancement or a ‘get rich quick’ scheme.

I still remember my first experience dealing with spam as a teenager in the late 90′s while I was in an online gaming chat room. Back then, chat room spam mostly consisted of spammers trying to interrupt legitimate conversations between users by posting the same word, phrase, or ASCII art over and over until it completely covered the screen. A couple years later, spam had already grown much more intrusive and was now geared toward advertising, chain letters and scams designed to bog down chat rooms, online forums, and email inboxes. I didn’t really take the expanding threat and annoyance of spam seriously though until one day, my mother received an angry phone call from AOL:

“What do you mean her account has been suspended? For what?! Pornography?!!”

Talk about having a lot of explaining to do – apparently, my email account (which was purchased under my mother’s name) was sending out hundreds of spam emails per day advertising porn websites. How did this happen? It turned out that one of the spam emails I received had instructed me to login to my AOL account to “verify user information” and said if I didn’t, my account would be shut down. So, like the gullible teenager I was, I clicked on the link in the spam email and was taken to a fake AOL login page that harvested my user name and password the second I tried to log in. It then used my information to log in to my real AOL account, access my email and send out spam. This seems like such an obvious scam to me today, but this is still one of the ways hackers dupe new email users and propagate spam to the point where spam now accounts for 94% of all emails sent.

The upside to my experience was that I learned a valuable lesson: spam is not to be taken lightly. So, you might think, “I only get a few spam emails in my inbox each day – so what?” Aside from the obvious irritation, spam emails can be extremely dangerous. Spam violates your privacy and security. Spam can pass along viruses and trojans that harm your computer and can harvest private data from your files. Spam is also responsible for a significant amount scams, phishing, fraud, risks to children and identity theft.

So, how do you stop spam in its tracks?

It’s quite easy actually. The first step is to become more aware of potential avenues for spam to attack. If you have a blog, forum, or a social media profile, change your account settings so all comments must be approved by you before they become publicly visible. This applies to your email as well. Avoid using any so-called “free” ad-based email accounts (like Gmail or Hotmail), and make sure your account’s spam filters and security settings are working properly. The second step is to be more aware of your Internet behavior:

• Do you regularly visit websites with a lot of pop-ups, adware, cookies and advertising?
• Do you register for free online accounts that ask you to provide a lot of detailed personal information?
• Have you ever opened an unsolicited email from a sender that you didn’t recognize?
• Do you publicly post sensitive information about yourself on social media websites, forums, chat rooms or within the content of your emails?

All of these activities can leave you at risk of attack by spammers, hackers, scammers and identity thieves.

Now, I’m not going to lecture you on your eating habits. As long as your spam stays in the kitchen and out of the Internet I say, to each their own.

About twenty years ago a data service – I forget which one – offered a set of compact disks for sale. It contained the names, phone numbers, addresses and demographic data for everyone in the United States. The product launch was drowned out by the howls of outrage from journalists and Congress. It was an unthinkable violation of privacy. It was Orwellian. The venture sank without a trace. For a while.

Ten years later David Brin wrote The Transparent Society making the case that secrets would soon be impossible to keep and that we shouldn’t even try. The Information Age would usher in an era where everyone’s life was on display. Governments would be models of transparency and openness. Corporations would throw open their records or pay through the nose for the privilege of keeping a few vital things confidential for a limited time. Privacy would be an outdated concept. A decade down the line he seems to be batting .500. While business and government have an increasingly broad view of what they can hide from the public the lives of the Little People are on display to an extent that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago.

Today? Ah, today is not at all like yesterday. We take it for granted that a few minutes or a few seconds plus a few dollars can extract anyone’s picture, phone numbers and address not to mention the most personal details of his or her life. People sign up for services which tell everyone in the world exactly where they are at all times. Friends of mine with Military Intelligence backgrounds describe how they used to agonize over photos in wallets, matchbooks and brands of cologne to try and piece together the outlines of a target’s contacts and associations. Today their subjects spend hours doing the work themselves with Facebook. Targeted advertising works so well that it’s killing traditional venues like printed newspapers. Twitter and Hotmail are free for the user because they are worth serious money to the real customers – advertisers.

In the last day or so I came across two very interesting takes on how much the world has changed. The BBC’s World Have Your Say featured a spirited worldwide discussion, also available as a downloadable podcast on how transparent our lives should be. My favorite security expert, the brilliant and very readable Bruce Schneier, wrote an excellent piece in the Japan Times. When you exchange information online it stays. Most data you think are private are only that way until someone else decides it’s worth something to share or sell them.

It’s not something most of us think about. We use credit cards. We tweet about whatever comes into our head and broadcast it. But it is very serious business which can have profound repercussions years later. The information we put out for the world to see is worth money to others. We should think about whether it’s worth something to us, how much we should value what we currently give away for free.

When people communicate, they want to believe that what they say or write is private. People take precautions every day to make sure information is shared only with the intended recipients.

Consider the example of people having a conversation in public. When you want to say something personal you will probably look around, lean in and either speak quietly. Sometimes you will hold your thought until you get to a more private location. You don’t want other people to know what you are saying.

The same should be true on the Internet. Most people don’t care if others know that they are going to go to a movie later that night. However, people often share personal financial, medical or legal information over the Internet.   They believe that these Internet conversations are private.  The reality is that much of the Internet is set up to gather your information to sell, spam or scam you. Recent estimates reported spam accounting for more than 90% of all email received.  What do you do to protect yourself? One way is to carefully understand the privacy policies of the websites you visit and see who owns your content. You will be surprised to find that in most cases you do not own what you write; often you don’t even own the content of your own emails.

While most companies don’t hire people to personally read your email, they do build computers to scan the content and sell that information to advertisers. These advertisements are specifically trying to exploit your personal information. Unfortunately, this often leads to serious issues such as spam and identity theft.

If a privacy policy is confusing it is often written that way by design. Many sites claim they don’t share their content with anyone, however between themselves and their subsidiaries, your information can spread over the Internet very quickly.

In addition to reviewing a privacy policy, a good way to tell that the company will exploit your privacy is by looking at their business model. If they have advertising on their site, advertising partners, or subsidiaries that have advertising, that is a telltale sign that they will in some way make money from your personal information.

You are the only person who controls what information you want to share. If you don’t want the world to know your legal, financial and medical history, be sure to carefully read the privacy policies and understand the true business model of the websites you visit.