A lot of people think that email is a private method of communication. It’s not.

Every email you send goes through half a dozen or so computers on various networks before it reaches the recipient. It’s not encrypted, encoded, password-protected, or otherwise rendered secure in any way. The administrators of those networks, their superiors, law enforcement agencies, and potentially hackers, can all gain access to the messages from any one of those computers.

That’s the reason that banks and credit companies don’t send personal or identifying information via email. They also wisely discourage you from sending information that way.

The analogy I often use is that email is like a postcard. When you drop a postcard in the mail, it goes through many hands on the way to its destination. There’s a lot of other mail in the system, so it’s unlikely that any of the people sorting, processing or carrying the mail will randomly read yours. But if they wanted to, they easily could.

So, if you wouldn’t send it on a postcard, don’t send it in an email.