Step 1.b Install the Enigmail plugin for your email program
In your email program's menu, select Add-ons (it may be in the Tools section). Make sure Extensions is selected on the left. Do you see Enigmail? if so, skip this step.
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If not, search "Enigmail" with the search bar in the upper right. You can take it from here. Restart your email program when you're done.
On the screen titled "Create Key," pick a strong password! Your password should be at least 8 characters and include at least one lower case and upper case letter and at least one punctuation mark. Don't forget it, or all this work will be wasted!
The program will take a little while to finish the next step, the "Key Creation" screen. While you wait, do something else with your computer, like watching a movie or browsing the Web. The more you use the computer at this point, the faster the key creation will go.
When the OpenPGP Confirm screen pops up, select Generate Certificate and choose to save it in a safe place on your computer (we recommend making a folder called "Revocation Certificate" in your home folder and keeping it there. You'll learn more about the revocation certificate in Section 5. The setup wizard will ask you to move it onto an external device, but that isn't necessary at this moment.
-After creating your key, the Enigmail set-up wizard automatically uploaded it to a keyserver, an online computer that makes everyone's keys available through the Internet.
+After creating your key, the Enigmail set-up wizard automatically uploaded it to a keyserver, an online computer that makes everyone's keys available through the Internet.
Step 3.a Send Adele your public key
-This is a special step that you won't have to do when corresponding with real people. In your email program's menu, go to OpenPGP -> Key Management. You should see your key in the list that pops up. Right click on your key and select Send Public Keys by Email. This will create a new draft message, as if you had just hit the Write button.
+This is a special step that you won't have to do when corresponding with real people. In your email program's menu, go to OpenPGP → Key Management. You should see your key in the list that pops up. Right click on your key and select Send Public Keys by Email. This will create a new draft message, as if you had just hit the Write button.
Put at least one word (whatever you want) in the subject and body of the email, then hit send.
@@ -231,25 +235,24 @@Step 3.c Receive a response
When Adele receives your email, she will use her private key to decrypt it, then fetch your public key from a keyserver and use it to encrypt a response to you.
-Since you encrypted this email with Adele's public key, Adele's private key is required to decrypt it. Adele is the only one with her private key, so no one except her — not even you — can decrypt it.
+Since you encrypted this email with Adele's public key, Adele's private key is required to decrypt it. Adele is the only one with her private key, so no one except her — not even you — can decrypt it.
It may take two or three minutes for Adele to respond. In the meantime, you might want to skip ahead and check out the Use it well section of this guide.
When you receive Adele's email and open it, Enigmail will automatically detect that it is encrypted with your public key, and then it will use your private key to decrypt it.
-Notice the bar that Enigmail shows you with information about the status of Adele's key.
+Notice the bar that Enigmail shows you with information about the status of Adele's key.
#4 Learn the Web of Trust
-Email encryption is a powerful technology, but it has a weakness; it requires a way to verify that a person's keypair is actually theirs. Otherwise, there would be no way to stop an attacker from making an email address with your friends name, creating a keypair to go with it and impersonating your friend. They would then be able to impersonate your friend by signing messages with the private key they'd created, and decrypt messages intended for your friend with the public key.
-That's why the programmers that developed email encryption created keysigning and the Web of Trust. Keysigning allows a person to publicly state that they trust that a public key belongs to a specific person. To sign someone's public key, you need to use your private key, so the world will know that it was you.
+Email encryption is a powerful technology, but it has a weakness; it requires a way to verify that a person's public key is actually theirs. Otherwise, there would be no way to stop an attacker from making an email address with your friends name, creating keys to go with it and impersonating your friend.
+ +That's why the programmers that developed email encryption created keysigning and the Web of Trust. When you sign someone's key, you are publicly saying that you trust that it does belong to them and not an impostor.
+ +People who use your public key can see the number of signatures it has. Once you've used GnuPG for a long time, you may have hundreds of signatures. The Web of Trust is the constellation of GnuPG users, connected to each other by chains of trust expressed through signatures, into a giant Web. The more signatures a key has, and the more signatures it's signers' keys have, the more trustworthy that key is.
+Step 4.a Sign a key
@@ -273,11 +280,29 @@Right click on Adele's public key and select Sign Key from the context menu.
In the window that pops up, select "I will not answer" and click OK.
In your email program's menu, go to OpenPGP → Key Management → Keyserver → Upload Public Keys and hit OK.
-You've just effectively said "I trust that Adele's public key actually belongs to Adele." This doesn't mean much because Adele isn't a real person. Before signing a real person's key, always make sure it actually belongs to them, and answer honestly in the window that pops up and asks "How carefully have you verified that the key you are about to sign actually belongs to the person(s) named above?".
-It's important to take keysigning seriously because it will affect people beyond just you and the person who's key you are signing. If someone doubts that a key actually belongs to the person that is says it does, they can go on a keyserver and see the number of signatures that it has. The more it has, the more they are likely to trust it.
-The Web of Trust takes this concept to the next level. It is a network of key signatures that is saved in keyservers on the Internet. It builds chains of trust between individuals that do not know each other by passing through others, a bit like the famous "six degrees of separation" game. You don't need to understand it in detail to use email encryption, but it will become a powerful tool if you become an advanced user.
+You've just effectively said "I trust that Adele's public key actually belongs to Adele." This doesn't mean much because Adele isn't a real person, but it's good practice.
+ + +Important: check people's identification before signing their keys
+Before signing a real person's key, always make sure it actually belongs to them, and answer honestly in the window that pops up and asks "How carefully have you verified that the key you are about to sign actually belongs to the person(s) named above?". The only way to truly make sure it belongs to them is to talk to them in person or on the phone, and have them give you identifying information (like a government ID), along with their key ID.
+