Email/attachments encryption

lavidaloca

I need to encrypt my emails and attachments. Looked around for a simple program but how do I know they are ok to use they could be anybody iyswim! So looking for recommendations please. When googling this one seems to come up first

https://www.stayprivate.com/pricing.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyo6qnef22wIViz8bCh2J7gHwEAAYASABEgL9R_D_BwE

John_Gray

Choose! (except anything saying Yahoo or AOL)
Protonmail would be my choice.

lavidaloca

Probably didn't explain my predicament well I am already using Yahoo mail and don't want to change my email address I just need to use something to encrypt the email and attachment. Thanks for reading.

kuratowski

The problem is you need the recipient of every email to be equally keen on having their emails encrypted. You can't send an encrypted email to someone who hasn't also set up secure email.

onomatopoeia99

The OpenPGP standard which a number of email clients or extensions support (e.g. GPG) will allow you to encrypt email, but that's only half the story. Encryption relies on key exchange, so the recipient must have a private and public key pair and you will need their public key to send them an encrypted email.


Go back some steps from your opening post, are your correspondents asking you to encrypt the emails you send, and if so are they providing public keys to allow you to do this in a way that they can decrypt?

lavidaloca

Thank you. I was hoping to use a password known to us both with different passwords for different correspondents.

esuhl

lavidaloca wrote: »

Thank you. I was hoping to use a password known to us both with different passwords for different correspondents.

That's sort-of how PGP (or GnuPG, aka GPG -- the open source version of PGP) works.

Everyone you want to communicate with creates a pair of keys (passwords) -- a private key that no one ever shares with anyone else, and a public key that you can hand out to those you want to be able to decrypt your messages.

If you want to email someone, you encrypt your message with your private key. Anyone with your public key will be able to decode it.

If the recipient wants to reply, he/she can encrypt the message with their private key, and (if you have their public key), you will be able to decrypt it.

https://www.gnupg.org/

esuhl

lavidaloca wrote: »

I need to encrypt my emails and attachments. Looked around for a simple program but how do I know they are ok to use they could be anybody iyswim!

PGP has been well-documented and in use since 1991. GnuPG is open-source and has also been around for a long time.

More info here:
https://theprivacyguide.org/tutorials/pgp.html

Neil_Jones

is this the web based version of Yahoo Mail or are you getting it through a client like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc?

I don't think, though I'm happy to be proved wrong, the PGP encryption referenced above doesn't work directly on Yahoo Mail via the web interface - it would need a browser plug-in to have the same effect.

tronator

esuhl wrote: »

If you want to email someone, you encrypt your message with your private key. Anyone with your public key will be able to decode it.

If the recipient wants to reply, he/she can encrypt the message with their private key, and (if you have their public key), you will be able to decrypt it.

You got it the wrong way around. Encryption is done with the recipient's public key and only he can decrypt it with his private key.


It would be bad if "anyone with your publickey will be able to decode it". The public key is the key you give to anyone. That's why it's called "public"

esuhl

tronator wrote: »

You got it the wrong way around. Encryption is done with the recipient's public key and only he can decrypt it with his private key.

It would be bad if "anyone with your publickey will be able to decode it". The public key is the key you give to anyone. That's why it's called "public"

Whoops! :eek: :rotfl:

I think PGP is the way to go because it's so tried-and-trusted. I was developed to be secure, and it (supposedly) what journalists in oppressive regimes, and the likes of Assange and Snowden use.

Clearly it's not's foolproof (as I have demonstrated)!

I'm sure it's fine if you know what you're doing.

Neil_Jones wrote: »

is this the web based version of Yahoo Mail or are you getting it through a client like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc?

I don't think, though I'm happy to be proved wrong, the PGP encryption referenced above doesn't work directly on Yahoo Mail via the web interface - it would need a browser plug-in to have the same effect.

Can't you encrypt a file with PGP, and then attach it as normal?