With the settings we picked above, corresponding with someone who has PGP will be pretty much as easy as sending email (you’re going to be asked for that password you wrote down, though). Go to Key Manager and then “Find All Keys for Contacts” and say ‘OK’ to everything. If you upload your contacts into Thunderbird, there’s an option that will scan them for PGP keys.In most cases, I found the same method as step two worked for these (they are just longer numbers). Some people post their PGP signature, as well. (If they give you a number without an ‘0x’ in the front, add it. Go to Thunderbird > Enigmail > Key Management > Keyserver > Search for keys.You can practice a search with mine (ID: 0xDF395EB8). Thunderbird makes it easy for you to attach your public key with your first encrypted email (or non-encrypted ones, too). Get the key ID from the person you want to email.Since you already have Thunderbird open, though, here’s how I found it worked best in there: I honesty found PGPSuite a lot better for this purpose, though.

We have now reached the largest source of friction in the process. You need to have someone’s public key downloaded to your keyring before you can send them an encrypted email.īecause you already have Thunderbird open, I’m going to describe how to find keys using it. So the more of us that do, and the better we get at it, the more routine it becomes and the less of our communications will be exposed to interception. If I want to use PGP and you don’t want to, then our communication can’t be secured. The big problem with PGP (and really all encryption) is that it has be mutual to work. Don’t wait till you think you need to keep something private. I also hope to convince many of you, reading this, just to go ahead and get set up with PGP right now. I need to be using PGP more myself, but the problem is: I can’t do it alone. Today, I am going to walk you through setting up PGP on a Mac (though it is pretty similar for PC–I have done both). It is in our power to communicate with each other securely. You’ve probably seen those words around, right? Edward Snowden wouldn’t email with Glenn Greenwald until he started using PGP. One of the longstanding methods that give malefactors a headache is PGP (which stands for “Pretty Good Privacy”). Even the NSA can’t hack emails if users encrypt them the right way. For all the news about security lately, you would think that it’s impossible-just impossible-to avoid getting your private communications seen by outsiders.

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