From what I understand of GPG so far, I can use Webmail to send and receive encrypted mail, the only thing is that I must manually decrypt messages which I receive using my private key?

Have anybody using GnuPG with webmail? Any ideas?

Depends on the webmail system you are using. SquirrelMail has a GPG plugin.

For other webmail systems, check the available plugins to see if they have similar functionality.

I'm talking about using third party webmail like gmail or yahoo. No chance, I guess?

Oh, sorry I misunderstood. No, those folks make their money by reading and aggregating your email. It's unlikely that they would deprive themselves of information while offering a "free" service.

Of course, if they (a third party webmail service) are doing the encrypting, they already have the clear text data, so encryption at that point would be useless. In addition, you would have to give them your private key, making everything protected by it exposed. It sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

In that case, encrypting manually before sending the e-mail would be a better idea? I am just wondering whether people actually do that?

Yes, manually encrypt, and upload as an attachment.

From my experience very few people (even vendors) care that their communications are open. They send financial accounts and pin numbers or passwords in email as if email is some type of private channel.

When I've tried to warn folks, they blow me off like my tin-foil hat is showing. Of course, I'm the one they will run to, to lament their identity theft. Sigh.

Just fyi, people like Yahoo do not bother to read your email, they could care less and they couldn't read that much anyway...
OTOH, they may be required by the local law eg FBI to supply email copies or it may be intercepted by eg NSA.
The rule in any case is never to send anything (unencrypted) you wouldn't send on a postcard in snailmail.
Remember, email isn't transmitted from you direct to your recipient, it's passed along from server to server, and cached on each one, so the sysadmin could read it if he wanted.

I quite understand. Was just wondering why GPG is not so popular. It's actually so easy to use. The only hitch, I suppose is that people have to exchange public keys and then use the other's public key to encrypt each message sent to that particular person...

Chrism01- While the services don't have people reading your email, they do have software reading it. This allows targetted advertisement placement. It also allows your account to be profiled over time, so that spontaneous "interesting" ads can be delivered. Think of it like Netflix recommendations. Ad clicks are how webmail services pay for the service, and the more accurately you can be profiled, the more likely you are to click on an ad.

Unfortunately, that profile may be accessible now, or in the future, to third parties that you may not consider acceptable. Many folks have already been through the sale of their personal information, when divisions of a company are sold or liquidated. Assuming that the email that you send through a webmail service will be private for any length of time is foolhardy.

Google has already stated that they will keep your email, even if you delete it, forever. Of course, they would never do anything bad with it; they promise. However, when Google decides to sell their GoogleMail division to some corporation in another country, all bets are off.

My suggestions: if you want free webmail, install SquirrelMail or Open Webmail on your own Internet connected PC. Use GPG for anything you don't want posted in a public forum.