What is the best way to encrypt emails? GPG?

abefroman · 08-18-2009, 02:45 PM

What is the best way to encrypt emails? GPG?

TIA

bsdunix · 08-18-2009, 08:02 PM

Not sure what your asking for "best way"?

I've used GPG with Mutt and it has been adequate for my needs.

There are frontends (gui add-ins) for most email clients to use GPG.

http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/frontends.en.html

Also check the email client of your choice in your favorite distro, it may already have GPG support built in.

abefroman · 08-18-2009, 09:18 PM

For GPG do you need to generate a key for each person you email?

TIA

win32sux · 08-18-2009, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abefroman

For GPG do you need to generate a key for each person you email?

I don't use GPG, but with public key encryption in general what you use when you send a message is the recipient's public key. The recipient then decrypts the message using his/her private key. Basically, the only keys you actually generate yourself are your own private/public pair(s).

gilead · 08-18-2009, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abefroman

For GPG do you need to generate a key for each person you email?

No, you don't have to. You give your public key to people so that they can encrypt emails to you (that you decrypt with your private key). You can also import their public keys into your keyring so that you can encrypt emails to them.

However, there's nothing stopping you from having multiple private/public key pairs and using them for different groups of people.

JulianTosh · 08-28-2009, 04:54 AM

A good PGP Primer...

http://www.packetizer.com/labs/cs/pgp_primer.html