TechEvangelists

We should talk more about GPG and encryption. I, for one, could use some more education on the topic.

As Joe User, why should I care about encryption?

There's the obvious reasons, for example, when you are emailing things like passwords, credit card numbers, account numbers or financial information. People routinely send information via email that should not be shared with the whole world.

The less obvious stuff is, for example, digital signatures. I could fairly easily send an email to all@c+m as if it came from you.

The analogy often used is putting an envelope on your email. You should assume that your email is being read by others if you do not use encryption.

You may have noticed that I digitally sign each message I send. Given the proper tools, you can verify that I actually sent the message, at a given time, and whether it was modified by a single character or more.

If everyone had the proper tech, *every* message I sent would be encrypted. When you are typing an e-mail, imagine putting that content on the back of a postcard---that's all the privacy you can expect.

Sometimes, you may want to be able to repudiate your messages, in which case you should not sign your message using strong encryption.