Generally, anything that is part of an email or attached to it is subject to the same safety and vulnerabilities as the mail itself. Anyone who intercepts the email has the attachments along with the message body.

In some email programs, anything you "insert into the message" also appears as an attachment, and some programs display anything that is an attachment of a common kind in the body of the email, usually at the bottom of the message. If you're using one of these programs, either method appears to the recipient as if you used both.

For some kinds of attachments, you can "password protect" the attachment before you attach it, so that the attachment can't be opened (easily) without the password. You need to be careful about what you protect, since the default usually is just to require a password to change the attachment and you probably want the password to be required to see the attachment.

This means the recipient must have the password in advance, or you need to send it separately. (Obviously? you don't put the password in the email that contains the attachement - we'd hope.)

Some people consider FAX a more "secure" method than email, and banks and mortgage companies are usually willing to have documents transmitted in/out that way. If the attachment is of an appropriate kind, you can run it down to Kinkos/FedEx or other service and have them FAX it for you. (That doesn't work too well for photos though, unless b/w 100 dpi is good enough.)

John