The most valuable thing about your email account is that it's your password recovery mechanism. What ever email account you use for password recovery or logging into things becomes the "super secure" email account.

There is no message in my email that I care more about than the one that might give you access to my bank accounts.

> There is no message in my email that I care more about than the one that might give you access to my bank accounts.

This is very well phrased. Email sort of serves two purposes these days, each with very different security models: text-based communication, and external service authentication. Do you have any ideas for separating these two functions, or at least improving their security?

Not really. The main thing that has been happening over time is that more and more low-security messages are being drawn away from email (Twitter, FaceBook, SMS). I used to get email forwards from friends/family -- now they post to FB. I never get a pic emailed to me any more. So, the trend to separate out low-security messages has been happening -- perhaps trending towards leaving email as only a password recovery mechanism.

Or maybe not even that -- I use 2-factor for Google and FB -- where SMS is in the mix -- SMS could even be the recovery mechanism, moving even those messages out.

Passwords are not the only authentication option. This could be a good way to replace all your passwords with something stronger (2 way, fingerprints, you name it) if your provider supports them.