There are a number of ways of communicating with me in a way where third parties would find it difficult to intercept and read. This page is a list of those methods in order of preference.

  1. If you have my private phone number, I prefer Signal from Whisper Systems. This is a text like service that's encrypted end-to-end. If you have my phone number I will show up as a contact in this service.

  2. A email encrypted with my PGP key sent to secure /*at^/ davidcoufal {!d0t!} org. This email address uses StartMail, a email provider located in the Netherlands (as of 2017 they arguably have some of the strongest personal privacy laws in the world). Email at that site is encrypted at rest, so that even if requested, the StartMail business could not decrypt.

    Note that I have two PGP keys, one for each address listed on this page, so be careful which one you use.

  3. A email encrypted with my PGP key sent to dcoufal [$ot^] alum (*d0t$) mit \%dit!\ edu. This email address uses GMail, so email sent there is discoverable, but if PGP encrypted, at least the message itself is secure.

    Note that I have two PGP keys, one for each address listed on this page, so be careful which one you use.

  4. If you have my private phone number, iMessage is pretty good if you trust Apple. Claims to be encrypted end-to-end, although it's closed source and who knows if they could be compelled to change that in the future. This method also requies Apple hardware of some kind.

  5. If you have my private phone number, What's App claims to be end-to-end encrypted. Closed source and owned by Facebook, so who knows.

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All other methods I consider to be insecure, so if you have a truly private message that you don't want bad actors, governments or any third party to read, please use one of the above methods.