A comparative study of the security level among different kinds of e-mail services – pilot study

摘要

Free web based e-mail services (e.g. gmail, yahoo and hotmail) are world wide known and used among e mail users for both personal and professional communication. However, because of the possible low security level they should not be the first choice when choosing an e mail address. The objective of this study was to repeat the test applied on the world-wide known free web based e-mail services and apply it on the institutional and ISP’s e mail services in the Republic of Croatia. The aim was to compare the security level of the e mail services between free and non free (professional) ones. The security test from earlier studies was applied on several e-mail addresses from each group by using session hijacking hacking tool to compare their security level. From nine e mail services based in the Republic of Croatia only one was partly opened and that address was the only really free one. Comparison of these results with the earlier study, where the same test was applied on the top 10 free world wide known web based e mail services, shows significant difference (p=0,034) regarding the level of security. The security test and comparison with previous testing has shown that it appears the free web based e mail services are less secure and therefore, whenever possible, should be avoided for professional usage.