Pretty Good Privacy

GnuPG is the open source version of PGP, the most widely used public key encryption software. It is free, easy to install, and offers a very good quality of protection using many popular algorithms. Graphical user interfaces and plug-ins for major mail softwares are also freely available.

Why? Emails and the most common file transfer protocols (ftp and http) are NOT encrypted. Anyone can read their content, as if your data was written on a postcard.

Who? You may have « nothing to hide » but your mail is still private. Even if you don’t care, if you are writing to me, I consider it private. So PGP is for YOU.

How? Public key encryption works with a pair of keys: one public (here is mine), one private (that I keep on my computer). Once a message has been encrypted using a public key, only the corresponding private key can decrypt it. It is that simple.