Worried about becoming the next Sony? Afraid all those terrible things you said about your friends, family, coworkers and teachers will be released for the whole world to read? Then perhaps you need to think about taking the next step and taking complete control over your email, even if you have a web-based service like Gmail or Yahoo Mail or whatever.

I very recently was made aware of an email client called MailPile, which gives the appearance of a web-based email client, it even runs in a web browser, but it’s actually housed on your own machine. It’s even designed to run from a USB drive if need be.

You can connect the client to any web-based or client-based (Outlook) email service, and it will download all the mail to your local device, and it encrypts them so even if someone gets your PC or USB key they won’t be able to read them. On top of that, you have to have the password for the account itself, as well as a passphrase (if you remember our class discussion) for the MailPile program as well.