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Are outgoing emails in Zendesk encrypted to end users?

Ryan
  • Edited
Zendesk Team Member

Question

Are outgoing emails in Zendesk encrypted to end users? 

Answer 

Zendesk Support and Zendesk Chat have opportunistic support for Transport Layer Security (TLS), a cryptographic protocol for email exchanges. This feature is enabled automatically on every account. Emails are encrypted whenever an inbox provider supports encrypted messages. It is not possible to have a forced TLS connection. If the receiving server does not support TLS encryption then ESMTP is used instead.

For more information on Zendesk’s security features, see this page: Secure customer service.

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10 Comments

  • Nedula

    @zendeskSupport - has this answered changed since the new EU laws (GDPR) have been implemented? 

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  • Helle Buhl

    I would also like to learn more about this.

     

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  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Team

    Hi Nedula and Helle - 

    You can visit our EU Data Protection site to learn about all of the changes and compliance related features and functionality. If you have questions that are unanswered by that site, please email them to privacy@zendesk.com for further assistance. 

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  • Helle Buhl

    A direct link to the articles about email encryption would have been nice. It is almost impossible to find anything on that site. I can't find where I can search on that site. And sending an email to legal demands that you have a lot of patience.

     

    Maybe I just don't understand the EU data protection site. 

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  • Ryan
    • Edited
    Zendesk Team Member

    I've updated the wording to be more clear. 

    More information, from Dyn: https://dyn.com/blog/opportunistic-tls-for-email-security/

    In short -- They are likely encrypted if the receiving/sending servers are supporting TLS.

    Dyn Mentions a transparency report for their server -- you can see the same for our email servers (zdsys.com) here: https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?search=zdsys.com

     

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  • Helle Buhl

    Thanks Ryan W

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  • Helle Buhl

    Just to be clear. What about incoming mails?

     

    If the customer's server is supporting TLS and the customer is sending an email to our Zendesk  is this mail then encrypted with TLS ?

    As I understand- then both servers are supporting TLS

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  • Alexander Popa
    Zendesk Team Member

    Hi Helle!

    That is correct for incoming emails as well. The emails are encrypted via TLS, as described here.

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  • Marci Abraham

    Maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see a detailed description at that link. I'm trying to understand this in depth -- we of course have emails flying all over the place, through all sorts of servers, all the hops along the way, and so forth. What are the odds, really, that TLS is being used at some percentage of those possible exchanges? Mightn't the email be encrypted at some points, but not at others along the way? Would love to get more details. Thanks.

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  • Sergei
    Zendesk Team Member

    Hi Marci,

     

    The page you've viewed is as much, as available to public. In short:

    What are the odds, really, that TLS is being used at some percentage of those possible exchanges?

    • all out communications demand TLS 1.2 minimum, as 1.0 and 1.1 were deprecated not that long ago (ESMTP, if TLS is not an option) 

    Mightn't the email be encrypted at some points, but not at others along the way?

    • All messages leave Zendesk in an encrypted state, so no, it should not change along the way.

    Hopefully this answers your questions is some way. Let us know if you have any further concerns or some examples to review and we'll be happy to help.

     

     

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