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I recently found out that Thunderbird also downloads my folders created in Hotmail. No biggie. But, those are stored in plain-text, and so it does with the inbox Thunderbird file.

How can I make Thunderbird encrypt my inbox and other mail related stuff it downloads as they contain sensitive information....

blade19899
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  • Is your home directory encrypted? as the stuff is stored in ~/.thunderbird or somewhere, that would encrypt it... or you could store it encrypted elsewhere, then mount it unencrypted like it I think it says here – Wilf Feb 19 '14 at 19:13
  • @Wilf, home dir is not encrypted. And the file resides in ~/.thunderbird/XXXXXXX.default/ImapMail/imap-mail.outlook.com. and the mails are stored in plain text... which worries me... And i don't really want to encrypt my home dir... Just my inbox and related files – blade19899 Feb 19 '14 at 19:15
  • I'm can't get my head around encfs at the moment, because it looks like it will work OK, but you might want to test it on something else first.... You might find this of help. – Wilf Feb 19 '14 at 19:26
  • Would this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/enigmail/ be something that might work for you? – Mitch Feb 19 '14 at 20:14
  • @Mitch, already found that one! From Mozillazine.org: ...I have found and started to use the enigmail extension which is really neat, but my inbox is still pretty much wide open to anyone with access to my computer... - and the extensions mentioned that it will store it in plain text... – blade19899 Feb 19 '14 at 20:20
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    For now i have raised a feature request about this – blade19899 Feb 19 '14 at 22:57
  • The best solution would be Thunderbird to provide profile encryption by default. I don't know if using a third-party encryption tool is a good idea, I already had enough issues in Thunderbird (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1201782#c29), so using something unsupported by default for encryption could cause problems also. – baptx Jun 24 '21 at 09:19

1 Answers1

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I haven't seen a graphical utility to do this, but you could setup an encrypted file container.

This is not trivial and requires manual configuration, and setting up a couple of script to unlock and then lock the folder when starting/exiting the application.

You could also encrypt any existing free space on a USB key or on your hard disk that has been made available by partitioning/resizing it as such, via the disk utility: enter image description here

Using a partition or external USB storage is a bit less convenient but the easiest to setup in my experience.

Encrypting your home folder means all your files remain unencrypted while you are logged in. What is your primary concern? Another user / the admin on the same machine getting access to your files? Breach of information as a result of theft?

Once you have created such an on-demand encrypted file system, you will need to tell Thunderbird to store its data there, either by using its profile manager or by linking the .thunderbird directory from your home directory to the encrypted file system.

MagicFab
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