Go to and click the green button to begin downloading Thunderbird. Step 1: Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird

It is possible to encrypt email attachments ( files you attach to your email ) but you need to pay special attention to the informational dialog boxes to make sure that you are doing what you intend. In other words, adversaries may still be able to figure out who you are emailing with, the subject line of your email and other information such as the frequency of your communications or the size of your encrypted messages. However it does not solve the issue of meta-data. Encrypting your emails with GPG is a countermeasure against interception of the contents of the email by 3rd parties.

GPG can be used to encrypt many types of files but in this tutorial we will focus on its most common use which is for encrypting email.Įnigmail is a plug-in for Mozilla Thunderbird which adds support for encrypting and decrypting emails to make the process easier. GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) is a free, open source cross-platform alternative to the ' Pretty Good Privacy' (PGP) suite of cryptographic software. Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform email client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. For further reading see the Wikipedia entry on public-key cryptography. Conversely, you should never give your private key to anyone unless you want them to be able to read your encrypted email or files. It is OK to give out your public key to others. The public key is used to encrypt plaintext or to verify a digital signature whereas the private key is used to decrypt encrypted text or to create a digital signature. The key pair consists of two parts: the public key and the private key. This tutorial will guide you through installing and configuring several pieces of software which can be used to protect the content of your email from interception by 3rd parties by using encryption.ĭuring this tutorial you will generate a 'key pair' for encrypting files.

This document is intended to help people quickly get started encrypting their email on Mac OS X

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