[mike one]

hey gang

i've been meaning to implement some excryption on my email, today is the today.

i've got a key, i installed GnuPG, i've got MAIL up and running using the GPGmail plugin.

so i want to establish a line of secure communication with a friend in another city.

i'm gonna email them my public key, but i've read a little bit about Key-ID and Fingerprint too, and was wondering where their utility lies. i don't need them in this scenario from what i can tell... true?
when would i?

t.i.a. for answering such a elementary question...


mike_one.

[nonhuman]

If you've got GPG that's all you really need. There are a number of GUI tools out there to make it a little more user friendly, but it's not too difficult to generate a key and all from the terminal and there are any number of tutorials online.

[ghporter]

Key-ID is basically a "name" for the key; I am not up on GPG, but in PGP the Key ID details who owns the key and usually what email address they generated it for. Fingerprint is effectively proof that the key is what it should be. It is typically a hash value that pretty much uniquely identifies that key, but since it's not a "handy and easy to read" value, it's not good for a name.

[budster101]

Why would someone need this again?

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by budster101

Why would someone need this again?

Because without it just about anyone on the internet could read any email message you send.

[ghporter]

GPG is an open source, public key encryption system that lets you secure the contents of a message so that only the intended recipient can recover them. I used the non-open source predecessor, PGP, when writing love letter emails to my wife while I was overseas for a year.

It is a Good Thing in most situations, primarily because email protocols are completely un-private. However, I would suspect that organizations such as the NSA pay a bit more attention to encrypted messages than to clear text for national security reasons, particularly in light of terrorist activities. That's not a problem (and even if they can read your message, if it doesn't mention doing violence on a public basis, they wouldn't pay any attention to it), but it's something to keep in the back of your mind.

[budster101]

Oh really... how is that done?

[ghporter]

Primer on public-key encryption. Description of how public-key encryption relates to encryption in general Description of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) And some good stuff about GPG