Using OpenPGP in e-mails

Today, I decided to use OpenPGP signatures and encryption in my e-mails. I know this was a bit late. For a long time, I was considering this but never had enough determination and technology (I was using Calypso, previous incarnation of Courier). So, today is the day. In case you ask: "Why do we need PGP?"

My e-mail client is Portable Thunderbird. There is an extension called Enigmail and it uses Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG) . The whole setup took less than 10 minutes on my laptop (WinXP SP2) and after a few trials, everyhing is working fine. I just quickly followed the instructions on the Enigmail site.

Here is a quick start (of course please check the instructors above for other details):

• Download GnuPG for Windows and install it
• Add the directory to your PATH in which gpg.exe resides (it is C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG in my system)
• Download Enigmail extension for Windows and import it into your Thunderbird thru Tools --> Extensions. Next time you start your Thunderbird you will see an OpenPGP menu on the top.
• From inside Thunderbird, generate a key pair for yourself from OpenPGP-->Key Management-->Generate-->New Key Pair

That's it. No pain, much gain. Many thanks to Thunderbird, Enigmail and GnuPG people to make it so easy.
For Unix folks,

Come on... You know what to do ;-)

Here is my pgp public key.