GnuPG and email encryption

There is a free package GnuPG that is installed on a computer and provides encryption and electronic signature in general and for email. There are costume plugins for most common email clients (Eudora, outlook, ...), for Thunderbird you need to install a sort of under development Mozilla extension, Enigmail.

Just download GnuPG, check its integrity by using sha1deep for checksums, and then install it. Then download the Mozilla extension and install it to Thunderbird. A new menu item will appear as OpenPGP.

OpenPGP will run you through a wizard the first time you use it. You need to input a pass phrase that protects your private key while the public key is shared with the recipient. It works perfectly fine and can be set to sign or encrypt per request or automatically.

The problem is that the recipient should have similar package installed in order to decrypt the code to see your email and/or verify your signature.

Links:

1. Thunderbird FAQ
2. Enigmail extension
3. GnuPG (download, windows FTP (SHA1: b34cb9678550d2acd5e988bc2ba9b20bfe361027))