At 1365125582 seconds of The Epoch, Don Saklad wrote: > A PC user unfamiliar with any free software would like to send > messages that only the two of us can read. Now what do I do? The numbers > of steps for it appear to be insurmountable! And I've failed to > understand GNUPG myself.
There isn't really a one-click solution to secure encryption and privacy. This is because, by the very nature of such an endeavor as protecting your data, email, communications, etc, you take on the ultimate responsibility to ensure the system works to your requirements. By over-simplifying the process, we would end up with a result that is perhaps more convenient, but likely less secure. There have been, and continue to be, efforts to simplify the deployment of secure encryption solutions, but debates continue (sometimes on this list--see the history) about how to accomplish such a feat while maintaining the integrity of the system's underlying security (its raison d'etre). You therefore owe it to yourself, and to your colleague, to spend a little time at the outset, climbing the learning curve, to understand at least the basics of how GnuPG works, and therefore how to employ it at a level of security which meets your needs. By "how GnuPG works," I don't mean you need to be able to debug the code, but at the very least you should understand the basic principles behind encryption, signing, key fingerprints, etc. Once you understand how it works, making it work will actually seem easier, since you'll know the reason for what you're doing as you use GnuPG, instead of just rehearsing a bunch of rote actions. Since you mention that your friend has no experience with "any free software," I will assume he is not running a free OS like GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, etc. It would help if you could provide more information on your environment, but under the circumstances I am going to take a statistical leap of faith and assume you are on Windows. Ergo, the following site should provide the software and guides you need to get started: http://www.gpg4win.org The downloads available through the gpg4win project include GUI tools, so you will probably not need to get your hands dirty in the command line. Although the GNU Privacy Handbook is more geared toward *nix deployments, I would also recommend you read through the sections that have general applicability, to further your knowledge of encryption: http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html (These are English language links, but please note other languages are available). _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
