Gil's Blog

Doesn’t anyone care about privacy? Sometimes I guess, once it’s gone and too late to get it back. It may come as a surprise to you, but encryption is totally prohibited in many countries. When you send a love letter through the mail, you put it in an envelope, right? You wouldn’t use a postcard, because someone could read it. Same goes for email. Your emails are sent in plain text, and any bored network administrator along the way could read them. So, I wonder why people don’t use the widely available softwares to encrypt and sign their correspondence? I’ve had a PGP key since 1999, and haven’t sent or received more than a handful of encrypted emails (server passwords, credit card numbers) in all those years. Most people don’t know how to do it, or simply don’t care. If nobody cares, some day, encryption might become illegal in the U.S. and there would be no reaction from the public.

Some will say that if you have nothing to hide, you don’t need encryption. That’s not the point. Terrorists and child pornographers might use it, but they would even if it was illegal. The point is to keep for yourself what isn’t anyone’s business. Corporations need encryption to protect their data, even small businesses. If a traveler wants to keep naughty pictures of his wife on his laptop, they shouldn’t be visible to anyone but him. When you need encryption, will it be available? Try to keep it that way. Use it now.

GnuPG (gnupg.org) is available, open source and free. You can install it on Linux or Windows. Ubuntu users will be happy to now that it is already installed on their system and integrates flawlessly with the Evolution mail client program. Install the GNU Privacy Assistant, and you’re all set. After creating your key, you can encrypt any files on your system, sign and encrypt/decrypt emails and receive encrypted files from other people that only you can decrypt. Anyone dealing with passwords and financial information will appreciate the security.

Want to see if GnuPG is installed on your Linux system? Type: gpg –version
If you get a version number and some cipher info, do a: man gpg

Have fun!

Gil.