PGP and GnuPG

 

CERT at Carnegie Mellon University - Software Engineering Institute has said "We recommend that you encrypt sensitive information in email to protect it from being viewed by unintended recipients. We prefer OpenPGP standard cryptography, which usually means Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) or the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG)." 

 

Having an OpenPGP key-pair allows others, who have a copy of your public key, to send you encrypted messages that only you (with your private key) can read. There are several freeware programs that use OpenPGP. I have listed some of the most popular and easy-to-use programs here:

• GPG4USB - http://www.gpg4usb.org/
• Portable PGP - http://ppgp.sourceforge.net
• GNU Privacy Guard - https://www.gnupg.org
• GPG4WIN - https://www.gpg4win.org
• GoAnywhere OpenPGP Studio - https://www.goanywhere.com/openpgp-studio
• GPGSuite (for MacOS) - https://gpgtools.org/gpgsuite.html
• Mailvelope - (Chrome / Firefox Extension) - https://www.mailvelope.com/en/

 

Once you have a PGP key-pair, publish your public key where others can easily access it, such as on your Facebook ‘Contact an Basic Info’ page, on your personal web-page, in your blog (my PGP public key can be found here),  or upload your public key to a PGP Key Server.

 

Even if you regularly use some other means of encrypted communication, having a PGP key-pair has many advantages, such as allowing someone you never met to communicate with you securely (as long as that person has your public key), and allowing people you have never met to validate things that you have digitally signed with your private key.