PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is a software & encryption algorithm which is used for encrypting & decrypting email messages for reliable email communication. There is a long and very confusing history behind PGP and if any of you is interested in knowing more about it, I’ll suggest to refer to this Wikipedia article on PGP.
Every now and then we hear news and concerns raised by people that the email communication is not safe and that it can be easily compromised. And still there is no effective and widely accepted encryption or (credible) security system for emails.
Credit : WM2006 Fan Fest Stuttgart – Security by Heraklit
Although, PGP was developed in 1991 and is credible and accepted system but it isn’t the de-facto of the secure email communication yet. Although, more the people will use it, more it will become inevitable for companies like Yahoo & Google to implement it on their servers.
Anyway, till the time these services don’t apply this encryption algorithm, we can use Windows Privacy Tools or WinPT which is a free alternative to the PGP software and allows you to sign or encrypt email messages for secure email communication.
But the real question is that why is it important to have secure email conversation ?
Well, I think you really know the answer to this question, its just that most of us have never thought on those lines and I’ll suggest you to think over it and you’ll automatically realize that how important it is to have secure email communication.
With WinPT, you can easily sign, encrypt your email messages and it works with most of the popular email clients. It can even work with GMail, if you use FireGPG extension.
I believe that secure email communication is really important and one should install this software for sure!
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Anyone interested in learning more about email privacy should look at http://www.novo-ordo.com. In addition to good background information on the topic, there are links to other sources of information and tables comparing secure email services from a number of providers.