Wow! + Securing your e-mail, Part 5

Folks, I am just not sure that I have it in me to write today — I’m still staggered by yesterday’s Super Bowl. I’m reeling. Stunned. And.. chagrined.
At the very start of the season I predicted (to anyone who would listen) that the New England Patriots would win the Super Bowl. I repeated this prediction — with growing assurance — each week.
(“But what about the Colts?” was the main objection/reaction I received.)

The omniscience of my prediction was bolstered by an undefeated season, and the Pats went into yesterday’s game something like 12-point favorites. They were playing (against) a wildcard team (only once before has a wildcard team made it all the way to Super Bowl victory) led by a young and untested QB.
I think you can figure where I placed my bet. Who could not say that the Patriots were the best team this year?
Wow. The reality was like a Disney movie. I expect the scientists to announce that the Earth’s magnetic poles have flipped positions any day now.

Now, back to work:
Now that we have WinPT installed and configured, it is time to start using GPG to encrypt our e-mails. Our public and private keys have been generated, and our public key is has been made into a transferable file (“Export”).

But first, lets review:
a: You will have downloaded and Installed WinPT, as I described in Part 3 of this series. (Those of you using a e-mail client other than Outlook Express will also need to download+Install the appropriate “plug-in”.)
b: And you will have configured the encryption program (GPG) and generated your keypair, as described in Part 4.
c: Those of you using Outlook Express (as I am for this demonstration) also need to launch the OE plug in (GPGOEInit). Simply click on it in the WinPT folder of your Programs list. Start >All Programs >Windows Privacy Tools >GPGOEInit. (also, please note the “Documentation” option.)

If you have played along, you should see two icons in your System Tray (by the clock), the WinPT “key”, and the OE plug-in’s “padlock”.

d: You will also have “Exported” your private key, and sent your key to the person(s) you want to exchange encrypted e-mail with. (The documentation, and my previous articles, discuss key exchange methods.) They will use your key to encrypt the e-mails they send to you.

Congratulations! You have come far. But, it should be fairly clear that for encryption to work, both ends of the transaction need to have the encoding/decoding tools– in short, the person you are exchanging encrypted messages with also needs to have GPG installed, and they will have needed to send you their public key (which you will have “Import”-ed onto your keyring).
If they have not (yet) installed WinPT/GPG, you can point them to this series by copy>pasting this URL https://techpaul.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/whos-reading-your-e-mail-part-1/ and sending it to them.

If these thing are in place, open OE and create a new message.

When using GPG, the appropriate method to encrypt the message is to issue a hotkey command: when your e-mail is typed and ready to go out, hit Ctrl+Alt+E. You will see a WinPT window tell you that the encryption was successful. Now click Send.
When you receive an encrypted message, open it and hit the Ctrl+Alt+D key.

The screenshot below shows the sample e-mail (encrypted) as viewed by a machine which does not have GPG capability. This is how it looks to anyone who might intercept it.

Clearly, this “after” picture is quite a bit different than the “before” picture, and my e-mail is unreadable by unwanted eyes.
Now you can safely and securely exchange sensitive, private, e-mail with only the intended recipient.

I will continue this series with more ways to use WinPT/GPG, and describe other tools/methods for encrypting e-mail, but will take a bit of a break before doing so — there is much in news I want to discuss first.

[Please note: the e-mail accounts and keys shown were temporary and have already been deleted.]

Today’s free link: For many people, the best part of any Super Bowl is the commercials. If you would like to view this year’s ads again, click here. You can even vote for your favorite.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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