[hrvbr]

The concept of email is too fuzzy. Is it SMTP that will last forever? This technology is more like sending postcards that every middleman can read. Certainly a more private alternative will replace it someday, and it should be more spam-proof.

Also email serves many purposes. If it is to be replaced, it will be on a use-case by use-case manner. RSS is a better alternative to one-to-many mailing lists. Forums are a better alternative to many-to-many mailing lists. Etc.

But yes, we should improve what we have until we can replace it.

[sliverstorm]

Encrypted SMTP is already in widespread use. Many MTA's already receive and deliver email over secure channels, and email clients (e.g. Outlook) have supported secure channels for a long time.

[dinglefuk]

SMTP and POP have encrypted analogous. Web server+Forum+Web browsers is hardly a better alternative to email many-many mailing lists.

[daigoba66]

While SMTP and POP protocols can be transmitted over TLS between hosts, which prevents reading messages along the wire, the email data itself is _not_ encrypted. A compromised SMTP server can easily read and copy any message received or transmitted.

[byerley]

And, even if you use a side-channel to distribute keys between the sender and receiver (to encrypt the data safely), the header absolutely has to be plain-text. Governments and companies scraping email meta-data is already a huge problem.

A protocol closer to Tor would make for much more secure email distribution, but it would also require a complete protocol rewrite. Potential death of email from a back-end point of view at least.