

This is a common type of encryption and is the same kind used for HTTPS. GPG is based on public/private key encryption (PPKE), also known as asymmetrical encryption. Throughout the tutorial, I will be using the command line version instead of any of the GUI options.

5 Since GPG is open source, it is freely available. This tutorial will walk us through using GnuPG (GPG), an open source implementation of the PGP standard, for email encryption.

#Gpg mail client verification#
What PGP provides is two key critical pieces of security: protection of the email message from unauthorized viewers (data confidentiality) and verification of the sender’s identity (data integrity). 4 PGP is a good tool for what it does, but it lacks many of features that make up modern secure messaging tools. The gold standard for encrypted email is OpenPGP (PGP).
#Gpg mail client software#
Without mainstream support for end-to-end encrypted emails, users are stuck using software that has not evolved since the early 90s. 3 This ended up being a lost opportunity to make encryption and data protection more mainstream: similar to the impact of WhatsApp rolling out end-to-end encryption in 2016. 1 This feature would move beyond just implementing HTTPS (encrypting traffic between a client computer and the email server) to implement end-to-end encrypted email that would protect users’ emails from even Yahoo!’s servers 2 -but it didn’t happen. Back in 2014-about a year after Edward Snowden leaked documents on government spying-Alex Stamos was trying to make email a safer place from mass surveillance by rolling out encrypted emails for all Yahoo! users.
