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The why for's and what not's of encrypting
Why for and What not?
Unless you've been living on a deserted island for the past few years, you've probably heard of the British law, which requires all ISPs to monitor Internet traffic and route it to a government organization. Also, the US governments monitoring program "Carnivore" has been in the news as of late coming under fire from various citizen's rights groups. These two events are exactly the reason why people should consider the use of encryption, not to mention those pesky little monkeys that seem to be everywhere you look!
I've been using PGP for a couple of years now, mostly to encrypt files that I don't want the average person to see, especially at work, but I never thought of PGP as a necessity until recently. If the governments of the world continue to push for monitoring capabilities of Internet traffic then the average Joe will be forced into using personal encryption software. The average Joe unfortunately doesn't have a clue where to get or how to use personal encryption, so I'm here to shed a little light, to give a beginners perspective on the use of PGP. From my the previous page, you learned how to install PGP which is all well and fine, but knowing how to use it is what we're really after.
PGPtray iconoid
Once you've rebooted you should see a small icon in your systray that looks like a pad lock. This is the memory resident portion of PGP and the key to becoming familiar with the program. Right click on it and watch a plethora of options pop-up...die monkeys die! You have your standard "Help", "Exit" and "Options" plus "PGP Keys", "PGP Tools", "Current Window" and "Clipboard". The "Help" is great reading and I often go to it for the parts I don't understand about PGP and encryption in general. I highly recommend perusing the "Help" to acquaint yourself with the operation of PGP before you begin using it in earnest!
The "Exit" option is a little obvious so I won't go into it, but the "Option..." choice is a whole other story. With some unfamiliar check boxes I was a bit confused, fortunately, the "Help" button in the bottom right of the "PGP Options" screen can explain in very easy to understand English exactly what each option does for you. Definitely go through each screen available in the "Options" window and hit the "Help" button, reading the help may seem tedious but it will only give you a better understanding of PGP and encryption. Base your option selections on what you intended to do with personal encryption, I've found that too much can be a real pain in the ass so I stick to the default settings whenever possible.
The "PGP Keys" choice will bring up a window displaying all of the public keys on your key ring. You should see your name on there as well as a bunch of other people you don't know. It seems they are individuals who work for Network Associates and I guess they put themselves in the installation program so you have an idea of what a key ring will look like when you put people in it?! I myself usually just delete them from my key ring, but make sure you don't delete yourself. You can highlight multiple people and just hit the delete key to rid you of them. This window also allows you to create a new pair of keys, send your public key to a server and search for someone's public key on a server. The search function is vital to your success with PGP since you can't decrypt e-mail messages sent to you without the sender's public key. When you do a search I've found it can take a long time so be patient. There are many other functions to explorer so feel free to look around, try right clicking on your own key to see some more things to do!
If you like to have a tool bar for quick click access to the various PGP functions then choose "PGP Tools" after right clicking the PGPtray iconoid. A small moveable bar with icons will appear for your encryption needs, handy if you do a lot of encrypting. I don't do that much encrypting therefore I rarely have it up, but be my guest if you like it.
I've never really used the "Current Window" choice before writing this article, but it takes the contents of the window in focus and encrypts/decrypts it for you. I guess you could encrypt the text in this article so that only the person you intend can see it. Just encrypt it on the fly, save the file and viola it is encrypted. I'm not sure if this works for all programs, but I was NOT able to encrypt the contents of a paint window. The “Clipboard” choice is very nearly the same as the “Current Window” choice except you are dealing with the contents of the clipboard. Again I’ve never used this feature but it is straightforward in it use.
That wraps it up for the brief overview of the PGPtray iconoid. If at first everything seems daunting just hang in there and keep reading/using. Eventually, the feeling will go away leaving you with a confidence that only comes with continued use.
The outlook on Outlook
You may notice after installing PGP the little icon on your Outlook Express/Outlook toolbar. This little button brings up your key ring allowing you to drag and drop your public key into an e-mail then the recipient can add your public key to their key ring. This will then allow them to decrypt any encrypted messages that you may send them. There is also the Encrypt (PGP) and Sign (PGP) buttons that are pretty self-explanatory. Don’t be afraid to test this out on a cooperative friend, I used Spot while writing this article to test different things about PGP and I’ve yet to learn all there is about it. The more you use it the more comfortable you’ll be.
For your eyes only
My favorite use of PGP is to encrypt files that I want to keep peeping eyes from seeing. This is also one of the easiest functions to perform. Simply chose the file or files you wish to encrypt, right click and go to the PGP section. You’ll see options for encrypting, signing and wiping. From here it’s straight forward, but under the encryption option you’ll see a check box “self decrypting archive” that builds an executable. When it is finished you should see a file with the extension of .sda.exe and all you have to do is open the file, plug in the password and it automagically decrypts the files for you. This is great for sending attachments in e-mail without having to encrypt the entire message.
Did you see those squirrels?
Are you, Joe the middle-aged white-collar worker, truly in danger from governments spying on your personal business? I think the governments have been spying on all of us for a long time already. No, I don’t mean they are after me or anything so delusional, just that they have the means and the balls to spy on anyone, anywhere whether they were deserving of the attention or not. With the ability to scan every phone call, every cell phone call, every radio broadcast, every satellite transmission and every snail mail letter in the United States of America it is an obvious extension to include the Internet. So, I ask again, do you need personal encryption? The answer is…. a resounding YES!
Think of it like this, if someone said, let me see all of your financial records for no apparent reason, you’d balk at the request! That is why you need personal encryption and that is just one reason out of many. With the Internet infiltrating our lives more and more, doing sensitive things electronically is fast becoming the standard. Gone are the days when you had a filing cabinet full of tax papers, loan statements, birth certificates, shot records and a paper shredder to keep information confidential even in the garbage. If you feel comfortable letting anyone look at your personal life in such detail then by all means ignore this article, but I’m sticking with personal encryption. I don’t use it everyday, but when I need it I have it handy.
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Copyright © by LWD All Rights Reserved. Published on: 2004-02-22 (2343 reads) [ Go Back ] |
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