Personal email accounts used for business purposes (employees, real estate, employer)

[AdotAllen]

I work in the mortgage industry, and I don't understand how any professional company would allow their employees to use aol, yahoo or hotmail email to send out business emails. But I get it all the time from title companys, brokers, and other companies. I just don't get it. It makes me leary when I have to send secure documents to those type of accounts.

Can maybe somebody who works in those fields explain?

[nctecchie]

Messages sent to business email accounts are just as unsecured as emails sent to personal accounts. The only email's that are safe are encrypted emails - i.e. through a secure email service - or if you encrypt the contents yourself (zip or rar the contents and put a password on them).

That said, I agree that it is unprofessional to use personal email accounts for work. Unfortunately, some people use personal accounts to get around business email account limitations (attachment size, spam filtering) - which itself is not a smart thing to do.

Anytime I send any sensitive information I send it encrypted in a zip or rar file and send the password in a separate email.

[Yzette]

Are you sure those emails are legitimate?

[ChiGuy2.5]

My uncle owns a small real estate company and he uses Aol as his main email contact. I get your point of view, but for somebody like himself, its just cheaper and easier.

[Wartrace]

I use G-Mail for my business along with the e-mail from my web domain. All I deal with is sensitive financial information and I am not going to trust that to any e-mail server. I use one of two secure file transfer services I subscribe to for data.

If I need to contact a client to remind the of something or cover non-sensitive information I see no reason not to use a G-mail account.

[macroy]

Originally Posted by AdotAllen

I work in the mortgage industry, and I don't understand how any professional company would allow their employees to use aol, yahoo or hotmail email to send out business emails. But I get it all the time from title companys, brokers, and other companies. I just don't get it. It makes me leary when I have to send secure documents to those type of accounts.

Can maybe somebody who works in those fields explain?

I'd agree... to a point. First - I'd never communicate sensitive information over email without compensating controls. For general correspondence, a sole proprietor may not have any need to establish their own domain. So many will just use businessname@gmail.com (or whatever provider their using). Of course, I would have some reservations if the email used for business is chuggingbeer@aol.com or beachbum@yahoo.com.

For businesses that work in a field where transmitting sensitive info is a norm (financial industry, real estate, medical, etc.).... They'll need to have some way to secure that info if you want my business. However large or small.

That said - regardless of what tools are available, its always up to the people to use them. Working in InfoSec - The lack of security (or lack of care really) in various processes is shocking. HR benefit providers sending PII to employers in the clear, loan officers that send stuff to underwriters in the clear (and this is after pulling that info off a secured transfer site their employer provides), Payroll services that send stuff to employers via clear email (or vice versa).