Note that you cannot send encrypted email to someone without access to their public key.
The email can then only be decrypted by the recipient’s private key, which is stored somewhere safe and private on his or her computer. Due to the technology behind this type of cryptography, the public key cannot be used to decrypt it. When you encrypt an email, you use the recipient’s public key to scramble the message. Conversely, you can find other people’s public keys on keyservers to send them encrypted email. Your public key is stored on a key server where anyone can find it, along with your name and email address. Each person has a pair of keys–the digital codes that allow you to encrypt and decrypt messages. To make sure only the intended recipient can decrypt the message, email encryption uses something called public key cryptography. When you encrypt an email, its contents are scrambled, and only the recipient has the key to unscramble it. Computers make the scrambling far more complex and impossible for a human to crack by hand. Sort of like those puzzles you did in school where every letter of the alphabet had to be converted to some other letter of the alphabet so as to decode the final message. How email encryption worksĮncryption, put simply, is no more than scrambling up the contents of a message so that only those with a key can decrypt it. We’ll walk you through the process in this article. You don’t need a degree in cryptography or anything, but it will take a dash of tech savvy. Not only must the sender have the means to encrypt an email, but the recipient of your encrypted email must have the means to decrypt it.
So you want to start encrypting your email? Well, let’s start by saying that setting up email encryption yourself is not the most convenient process. This leaves email users susceptible to hackers, snoops, and thieves. By default, most email providers do not provide the means to encrypt messages or attachments. One of the biggest problems with this cornerstone of electronic communication is that it isn’t very private. Critics today decry the eventual fall of email, but for now it’s still one of the most universal means of communicating with other people that we have. Email was one of the earliest forms of communication on the internet, and if you’re reading this you almost undoubtedly have at least one email address.
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