Coming to a theater near you

I have, today, the opportunity to “network” with a pioneer in field of computers which will require me to do some travelling. So, I will not have time to write Part 2 of the ‘encrypt your e-mail’ series today– you will have to wait until tomorrow (sorry).

For those of you who like to read ahead, and be prepared for class, I am going to be discussing the method of securing communications called “Public-key cryptography“, and by clicking the link you can read the very good description of what this is and how it works posted on Wikipedia.

You may also want to read about PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a cryptography tool that was not only one of the first, but is sort of the Gold Standard of privacy tools available to the public.

Since PGP is a powerful retail tool, and we here at Tech–for Everyone (me, myself, and I) are great believers in Open Source and other free tools, I will demonstrate encrypting your e-mail using the Open Source version of PGP, named “GPG” (GNU Privacy Guard). Specifically, I’ll be demonstrating how the use the Window’s graphical interface “frontend” found in WinPT. The link will take you to Wikipedia’s description.. and you can follow the links provided there to the WinPT website. Maybe take a look at the documentation and instructions found there.
This is the tool we will be downloading, installing and configuring, and using in this series. [note: GPG does work on Macs, but uses a different interface. Those of you with Macs will have slightly different install steps and your screens will “look different” but your operation will be the same. You will be able to securely e-mail your friends with either Windows or Macs.. and visa versa]

So.. do your homework, and tune in again tomorrow. And have a great day in the meantime.

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