[kamjam]

It's a fair point, but I think from a users point of view they should really need to get bogged down with the tchnical details.

It can feel a bit "advanced" for the average user to setup, but if that is the case and they NEED privacy then they could use something like http://www.hushmail.com/ which will encrypt the emails (but only with other users with encryption keys). It's web based to there's the whole use from anywhere thing... Of course, just use Thunderbird and get the whole things for free :)