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gpg

Created by dave. Last edited by dave, 19 years and 139 days ago. Viewed 9,935 times. #2
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Gnu Privacy Guard

You may have been directed to this page by Dave's email signature, and because you noticed some kind of mystery attachment to Dave's email message that your client can't or won't deal with (or even is giving you dire warnings that the attachment is evil).

This attachment is a Gnu Privacy Guard signature. This is a cryptographic number which, when used with Dave's public key, can confirm to you that it was sent by Dave and content-wise is unmolested.

Note for Hotmail Users: This attachment is completely harmless, no matter what Hotmail intermittently claims. It is also completely useless to you right now, so you should just ignore it.

If you have a suitable set-up, you can verify this signature right in your mail client, and even send Dave encrypted mail which no one except Dave (and by no-one, I mean including you) can decrypt and read.

To do this, you either need an email client which can handle GPG, or perhaps a plugin for your current email client. You might find a starting point >>here. Note that this can be a pretty complicated process, and it may not be for everyone.

Dave is using GPG-signing on most of his emails these days. Not out of any concern for his privacy; but more to exercise his knowledge of the tools, and to spread awareness of the technology.

Below you will find some notes on GPG, which mostly refer to the command-line version (and mostly there to the unix flavors).

If you are interested, the Quick Start guide should be mostly applicable no matter what platform you are on and should give you a basic understanding of how to use the tools.

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This is a collection of techical information, much of it learned the hard way. Consider it a lab book or a /info directory. I doubt much of it will be of use to anyone else.

Useful:


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