Since the Snowden revelations, it has become clear that email as a basic internet protocol is essentially insecure, and other options — texting, messaging apps, and the like — are not much better. 

“If you really want to have secure communication, don’t use email,” says New York Times Tech Columnist Molly Wood.

There has been signifigant movement on creating simpler encryption tools — Virtru, for example, is a browser plugin that encrypts messages for the recipient when emails are sent from a browser using the program.

However, even a potentially game-changing method like this has its issues: a third party is still being given the information.