Risk: Informational
An investigation into MI5's terror alert emails at the beginning of January discovered that they were not secure, with details apparently being sent unencrypted to a US-based server.
According to Spy Blog, an organisation that monitors security and surveillance: "Astonishingly, MI5, the Security Service, part of whose remit is supposed to be giving protection advice against electronic attacks over the internet, is sending all our personal details (forename, surname and email address) unencrypted to commercial third party e-mail marketing and tracking companies which are physically and legally in the jurisdiction of the United States of America, and is even not bothering to make use of the SSL/TLS encrypted web forms and processing scripts which are already available to them."
That was at the beginning of January, and by the middle of the month, the security had been improved so that SSL links were used when submitting subscribers' data.