How To Encrypt
Your Email
Encrypted email allows you to protect your confidential email from casual
prying when you communicate with others. Encryption works by taking your plain
text message and scrambling the output so that it is unintelligible to someone
who views it without decrypting it. To read it, the recipient must decrypt the
message using a password (or key). For the purpose of communication, people
typically use something called Public Key Encryption to implement this. However,
since everyone does things differently, you will have to check the various free
services and software listed here yourself to find out how they implement it.
Pretty Good Privacy is a popular program used to encrypt and decrypt e-mail
over the Internet. PGP can also be used to send an encrypted digital signature
that lets the receiver verify the sender's identity and know that the message
was not changed en route it will stop efforts to harvest credit card numbers and
information that can be used to commit identity theft. Email encryption is easy,
free and offers strong protection against prying eyes. PGP is the most widely used
privacy-ensuring program by individuals and is also used by many corporations.
PGP has become a de facto standard for e-mail security. PGP can also be used to
encrypt files being stored so that they are unreadable by other users or
intruders.
How It Works
PGP uses a variation of the public key system. In this system, each user has
a publicly known encryption key and a private key known only to that user. You
encrypt a message you send to someone else using their public key. When they
receive it, they decrypt it using their private key. Since encrypting an entire
message can be time-consuming, PGP uses a faster encryption algorithm to encrypt
the message and then uses the public key to encrypt the shorter key that was
used to encrypt the entire message. Both the encrypted message and the short key
are sent to the receiver who first uses the receiver's private key to decrypt
the short key and then uses that key to decrypt the message.
Configure
Outlook Express for PGP
1. Launch
Outlook Express. Click Tools?PGP?Options.
2. Select the
E-mail tab and check these two boxes:
? Encrypt new messages by default
? Sign new
messages by default
3. Click
OK. You are now ready to send an encrypted message to your partner.
4.
Create and send a new message
to your partner. When you click the Send button, a Recipient
Selection window will appear. Your partner?s e-mail should be listed under
Recipients with a red question-mark because you and your partner have not
exchanged key pairs.
5. To
acquire your partner?s public key, right-click the question mark and choose
Update from Server. Click OK.
6.
Click the Import
button. You will be prompted to enter your passphrase.
7.
After
your partner has sent you an encrypted message, click the Send/Receive
button. Open the newly-received message---it should look similar to this one:
8. Click the Decrypt button.
You will be prompted for your passphrase---enter it correctly and
the message will decrypted.
Configure PGP in Thunderbird
1.
Run the GPGP installer. It should put GNUPGP under your Program Files directory.
2.
Once you've downloaded Enigmail, in Thunderbird open Tools -> Options
->
Extensions -> Install New Extension, and then choose the Enigmail extension
file.
3.
When you've restarted Thunderbird with Enigmail installed, you will see an
OpenPGP menu item. Open it and go to Preferences. There you'll find a dialog to
point to your GnuPGP binary. Click Browse. On my machine, GPG was installed
under Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\gpg.exe.
4.
Now you?re ready to create your first key pair.
From the OpenPGP menu
item, choose Key Management. From the Generate menu, choose New Key Pair.
Then select the email account that you want to
create your first key pair for and set a passphrase. Hit the Generate Key button, and
wait some minutes.
When the key creation is done, you?ll be notified
about it and asked if you want to create a revocation certificate. A revocation
certificate is useful for if the secret key of your key pair gets lost. Just
click ?Yes? and Enigmail will prompt you to choose a location where you
want your revocation certificate to be saved.
5. To find someone's PGP
key, from the OpenPGP menu, choose Key Management. From the Keyserver menu,
choose Search. Search for another PGP user by name or email address and add his
key to your key manager. Once it's in there you will be able to encrypt
mail to that person.
6. Compose your message as usual. Encrypt it by clicking the little key down on
the lower right of your compose window. You can also cryptographically sign your
message to prove it's you; that's the little pencil.
When the key is colored green, it means the message
will be encrypted.
Encryption makes your email only readable to the
person you intend it for?hence the need for the person?s public key to encrypt
the message for other persons it looks like :
You can easily decrypt this email by selecting
Decrypt from the menu and entering your passphrase when asked.
Now, you can feel comfortable in the thought that
you can send secure email messages. Certainly, there are still some precautions
to consider, like keeping a secure copy of your key pair as well as your
passphrase. But anyway your email will be protected
PGP is such an effective encryption tool that the U.S. government actually
brought a lawsuit against Zimmerman for putting it in the public domain and
hence making it available to enemies of the U.S. After a public outcry, the U.S.
lawsuit was dropped, but it is still illegal to use PGP in many other countries.
