My question, is using Earthlink's webmail just as secure as the SSL Connection and why was Daniel's log in and password revealed???
The only way to get secure email, for *reasonable* definitions of "secure" is to encrypt the contents.
There are a number of ways to secure the connection between your computer and your mail server - and using a web browser and an HTTP form based email client where the channel has been encrypted is one - but the content still passes from one SMTP server to another as plain text.
Pretty much every stand-alone email client these days supports multiple technologies for transmitting authentication information in a secure manner. But you have to actually configure the client to do so, and the server has to support the mechanism, and both have to be set up correctly.
And some mechanisms are more "secure" than others.
-Jeff Lowrey
