How to Encrypt Your Email Messages with PGP

how to:How to Encrypt Your Email Messages with PGP

Posted by Brannon Cullum in Email Advocacy, Stay Safe and Anonymous Online, Desktop Digital Security, Mobile Digital Security

PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, is a software that can be used to encrypt data on your computer. It provides both cryptographic privacy and authentication to secure your data. Cryptographic privacy is the art of protecting information by transforming it (encrypting it) into an unreadable format. Only those with the correct key can decipher/decrypt it into plain text, a readable format. Authentication is used to establish and confirm identification and association.

The freeware version of PGP allows you to encrypt and sign email messages and individual files that you exchange with others. It only includes PGPmail. To use other components of PGP, like email plug-ins for email clients like Outlook or whole disk encryption (PGP Whole Disk), you will need to upgrade/buy PGP license and software.

PGPMail allows you to encrypt and sign email messages and individual files that you exchange with others. If you are sending or receiving emails with sensitive information, you may want to better secure the messages by encrypting them.

Share

Step 1.

You can purchase PGP onilne for $149 USD. A freeware (also known as shareware) version of the software is also available for non-commercial use. It is called trialware on the PGP site, but it’s still freeware. According to creator Philip Zimmerman, PGP will revert from full-featured trialware to freeware after 30 days.

Point your browser to http://www.pgp.com/downloads/desktoptrial/desktoptrial2.html.

Step 2.

Read and accept the PGP Software License Agreement. You will then be re-directed to the download page.

Download the software for your particular operating system.

Step 3.

Double click on the file and you will be guided through the steps to install PGP on your computer.

During the installation process, a dialog box will appear asking ou to select which PGP components to install. Uncheck all of these boxes if you want to only use PGP as freeware. You won’t be able to actually use any of the components listed in the dialog box unless you buy the software and obtain a license.

To finish installation, you will need to reboot your computer.

Step 4.

After the installation of PGP Desktop completes and your computer reboots, you will be prompted to enable PGP for the account. A PGP License Authorization box will appear.

If you want to authorize this trial, enter the following information.

Enter Trial User as the user name and 30 Day Product Trial as the Organization.
Do not enter an email address.
Enter this license number: DKCE2-C6RQL-VLCBG-AC494-NBFG0-E6A.
Follow the remaining instructions onscreen to complete installation.

If you only want to use PGP as freeware (recommended), don’t enter anything into the field boxes, and just click “Later.”

Now you are running PGP freeware!

Step 5.

PGP is accessible through the PGPtray icon in the system tray area.

The PGPtray contains the tools you need to operate PGP on your system. Click on the tray icon and you should see a menu with following options: Hide, About PGP, License, Help, Options, PGPkeys, PGPmail, Current Window, and Clipboard.

Step 6.

First, you will need to create a public key. Select PGPkeys from the menu. Generate a key by choosing “Keys-New Key” from the PGPkeys menu, or by clicking on the Key icon. The key generation wizard will launch. Click “Next.”

The text that you enter into the "Full Name" and "Email address" fields will be associated with your key and distinguish it as belonging to you. You do not actually need to use your own name there, but you do need to use a valid email address. Click “Next.”

Now you will choose your passphrase. Choose a very strong passphrase that includes upper and lower case letters, numbers and characters. Don’t forget this passphrase!! If you forget it, you will not be able to use the key to decrypt anything!

Retype the passphrase for confirmation, then click “Next.” The key will be generated, then click “Finish.” The PGPKeys window will appear. You should see your public key in the window. Write it down!

Step 7.

After you have created your public key, enter the PGP option inside the control panel, type your PGP key into the box, and click “Add.”

Step 8.

Distribute your public key to people! Email it to them, call them and give it them, etc.

Step 9.

Get other people’s public keys. Ask people you are corresponding with for their public keys.

Step 10.

To sign and/or encrypt an outgoing email message: Compose your email message as usual. Then click on the PGPtray icon. Select “Current Window-Encrypt,” “Current Window-Sign,” or “Current Window-Encrypt and Sign” depending on what you want to do. PGP will process the message replace your message in the composition window with the encrypted message. You can then send the processed message in the usual way.

Step 11.

To decrypt a received message: Open the message, then click on the PGPtray icon. Select “Current Window-Decrypt and Verify.” If the mailer does not support window operations, then PGP can still be used by manually moving data to and from the clipboard. After composing the message, select the entire message and copy the text to the clipboard.

Share