Raise your hand if youve shared a username and password with someone over IM? Ever share a document with your SSN or other extremely sensitive information without protecting it? How about if youve sent, erm scandalous pics to your significant other? Thanks to the internet, we share more than ever, and so quickly and easily, that we do it without a second thought. Thats great, but it may be time you learn a little about how to do that sharing in a more secure fashion.

Title image remixed from Mayer George Vladimirovich and mkabakov.

Here well walk through the easiest and most secure ways to share files, passwords and other data with people you trust. There are countless other methods out there, but these are our favourites. The method you use to share data should depend on what youre sending, how secure you want that material to be, and how willing you are to take proper security methods.

If youre just sending a username, password or other line of text (like a credit card number), protect your info with a few simple tricks:

Sometimes all it takes to increase your security is a little obscurity, and thats what this method is all about. You send the sensitive data over separate channels so that only the recipient is likely to have context for what it all means. Lets say you wanted to share a username and password with someone over the internet. Heres the basic idea:

1. In an email, send the username with an accompanying message something like Ive texted you the FTP password. 2. Text the password separately, with no context. 3. The recipient receives the password, saves it elsewhere and deletes the text message.

Even if your recipient doesnt delete the message (which you cant count on), a snoop would have no context for what it applies to. The basic idea could work in any direction, as long as youre separating the context from the information. Is it 100 per cent foolproof? Absolutely not. But its better than nothing, which is what many of us are doing now.

If you want to get even more creative, you could send someone the first half of the password via SMS, the second half via email, and let the recipient know over IM how its been broken up. That way, a thief would have to have access to both the email, IM account and the phone. You get the idea.

Password management service LastPass is still one of the most secure ways to create and store passwords. If your recipient is also using it (or if you can convince them of how great it is and get them signed up), sharing passwords and other small notes securely is extremely easy. Just pop into your LastPass vault, click the Share link next to the password or secure note you want to share, type in your recipients email address, and LastPass will take care of the rest securely. If youre sharing login credentials, you can choose to share the actual password (so your recipient can learn what it is) or just share access to the credentials in question, so your friend or colleague can log without actually learning your password. For more info on how to share passwords with LastPass, check out our how-to on the subject.

If you need to send full documents like paperwork for your job or a saucy photo youll need the help of an external service. Here are our favourite ways to securely send files.

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From Saucy Pics To Passwords: How To Share Sensitive Information