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I use encrypted email to converse with some people. Unfortunately, the encryption doesn't apply to the message subject.
Now, on one hand, I do want to use meaningful subjects/titles, but on the other hand - I lose half the value of encryption if people know what I'm taking about with someone.
To be more specific, application-wise, I use Thunderbird with Enigmail; but my question is not specific to just that.
einpoklum
Posted 2017-01-28T09:07:01.287
Reputation: 5 032
1Subject field is part of email header and is subject for antispam systems to be filtered. If you will use encrypted Subject field you will tease filtering systems such
spamassassinthat will rise spam points on your emails. For example encrypted message can't be a binary string, so it would be encoded in base64 which probably trigger SUBJECT_FUZZY_* rules. Why not to use always the same phrase in Subject such as "See inside..." or similar? – Alex – 2017-01-28T10:55:03.910@Alex: Because I want to have a proper subject line when I look at the message (after it's been decrypted). – einpoklum – 2017-01-28T11:04:42.583
I afraid you asking to change industry standard, neither outlook or popular end-2-end protonmail and other providers encrypting Subject line. In all systems Subject field used in search criteria and decryption would be a bottle neck. I heard that MIT trying such things you want in their Mylar system but it isn't standardized yet
– Alex – 2017-01-28T11:18:42.023Seems to be solve. What you want is possible with Enigmail in Thunderbird! It's now a default option. I could see that Evolution can read the encrypted subject while decrypted. For my part, I would also be interested for such a functionality in EvolutionMail or others. Could someone explain how does that functionality work? Is Enigmail the only way to obtain "Subject encryption" ? Is the "Encrypted Subject" stored in the message body or header? Thanks. – albert – 2019-03-07T14:49:01.077