Want to send an encrypted archive file to a Mac user.
 

This isn't technically a linux question so I thought it would fit best in the general forum.

I want to email a copy of our mother's will to my sister, who has a new Mac. I would like to encrypt the pages for privacy when I email them. I'm guessing gpg isn't standard on a mac, otherwise I would just use that to encrypt the files separately. My next thought is an encrypted archive (tar, zip, whatever). Does anyone know what kind of format would be relatively easy to create in linux, and easy for her to open on her Mac (once I call her and give her the password)? Ideally something where she doesn't have to install a new application just to read it. It doesn't have to be bullet proof encryption, because the documents don't have really sensitive financial information (no account numbers or SS #s, etc).

Any suggestions?

You can install GPG pretty easily on a Mac, but you said you want to avoid that.

Alternately, perhaps you could have her directly download it from your machine? That way you could verify she is the one receiving the file since you would give her a username and password.

Though honestly, if there is no important data in the will I can't imagine why you need to encrypt it in the first place. Unless other people have access to her email account, it seems safe enough to assume that she is the only person who is going to have access to it if you send it only to her.

just get your sister to install mac gpg on her computer. that is probably the easiest way, and gpg and pgp are very secure. you can't really trust archrive passwords much. but if you still wnat to, you can use the 7z format, but you will have to install 7-zip on linux. so either way, you will have to install some kind of new software.

i personally would go with installing mac gpg. download and install from here:

http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/
you don't need any of the other stuff like gpg keychain access, that is just extra stuff. the main part is the .dmg file you will get from the top part of the download section.

good luck,
rabbit2345 ^_^

If you have sshd (the service) installed on your Linux box, ask her to sftp to your machine and get the file that way. That's probably the easiest way..another way would be to run a web server on your box for a moment and put the file inside a directory that requires authentication for access, then ask her to browse to that directory. I guess using sftp is a lot easier..

Though the easiest method is to do it the old way, print the papers (if you don't already have printed copies, which you maybe should have), seal them inside a letter and send it to her. Takes a day or two more than with e-mail, but I don't think it's that urgent..

Sending it via e-mail unencrypted is like giving it away. E-mails can fairly easily be grabbed, and without encryption it's there for anyone to read (though you said it's not that sensitive). In addition some parties seem to store e-mail traffic for some while (for "security reasons" and whatnot), so it's even worse idea to send anything important trough mail -- that's why a direct connection between your and her machine is a better approach, and even better if it's encrypted (ssh versus ftp, for example).

Thanks everyone. I didn't realize a dmg file was the standard way to install software on a Mac. I'm guessing gpg should be pretty easy for her to install if I walk her through the original download process. Is this correct?

Also, even if I don't use an encrypted archive it would be nice to roll the files up before encrypting the archive file with GPG. This way it is easier on both ends. Are there any standard archive formats that are relatively easy for me to create in linux which will work out of the box for OSX?

You could also use 7zip.

Merge them into one file with tar, and optionally compress them with gzip.