If you send e-mail messages that include information that should be kept private - such as credit card numbers, healthcare records, customer data, passwords, or company secrets - then you should encrypt your e-mail. For this reason, governments worldwide have instituted regulations to protect the privacy of sensitive, personal information contained in e-mail messages.

In the United States, numerous regulations have been enacted to provide privacy protection guidelines to industry sectors including Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for healthcare providers, the Gramm-Leach-Blilely Act (GLBA) for financial service providers, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for publicly traded companies.