I’ve been using email encryption for many years dating back to the old (and free) PGP software. I think they’ve gone corporate now, but who cares. The wave of the future is Enigmail + GnuPG + Thunderbird.
Here’s what to do if you would like to setup email encryption:
- Download, install, and configure Mozilla Thunderbird for access to your email – e.g. Gmail
- Install GnuPG on your system
- Install the Enigmail add-on for Thunderbird
Here is a great tutorial on how to put all of these components together and get them working. Once you and a friend have this setup on both ends, you can sign, encrypt, verify, and decrypt messages between each other using your key pair. It works wonders if you are communicating “secret” information you want no one else to read. The internet is full of hackers, so be prepared!
