Pretty, good and private

PGP encryption

PGP stands for pretty good privacy and is used for encryption. It helps you to encypt your emails and files, so that only people you want to see the content can view it.

Of course, you can create a ZIP file and use a password, but that is not that secure as PGP supports.

To make that better, PGP works with two keys. One public key, you can give away and one private key which is secret and should only stay with you! The private key is additionaly secured by a passphrase, only you know.

To have it easy in all ways, you can use the free and Mac OS X ready compiled applications at the Mac GPG site.

To manage the keys use Keychain Access. This tool is also used to create your public and private key, if you do not have one, already.

If you want to send me a text or a file, that can be read only by me, you need to have my public key added to your keychains. For files use the FileTool, for messages use the DropThing.

For emails, you may use the GPGMail plugin in the OS X Mail application. Under the subject field you will find the PGP options for signing, encryption and decryption. Here please take a short look for the installation. You need to copy the file GPGMail.mailbundle to “~/Library/Mail/Bundles/” (Macintosh HD) manually.