When you send data over the internet it passes through many different servers before it reaches it's destination. This data can remain on those servers for months and at any stage of it's journey it is vulnerable to interception. 

Most of the time this may not concern you but there will be times that you need to transmit sensitive data - such as a business quote or personal details. At times like this you need to ensure that if your message is intercepted then it will make no sense to anybody but the intended recipient. 

The best way to do this is with an encryption program. In simple terms an encryption program turns your e -mail in to a seemingly random array of characters. The only way to read it is with the right key. A key is an algorithm that unscrambles the garbage and puts it in to a readable format. This in itself is a problem - your intended recipient must have a copy of the key that will unlock the code. You can't send that over the Internet or it could be intercepted and that would defeat the purpose of encrypting your message in the first place. To get around this there are two keys created - one is called a secret key and one is called a public key. You send the public key to everybody who will be sending you encrypted e-mails and they in turn send you their public key. You keep the secret key (yes you guessed) secret and they keep their secret key secret. The best way to explain how this works is to imagine a key and padlock situation - normally you would take the key to the padlock to open it but in this case you are sending the padlock to the person with the key. Anybody picking up the padlock in transit can't open it because they don't have the key. 

This sounds very complicated but in practice it isn't and once you have exchanged public keys with your friends and colleagues the whole process is relatively seamless.

OK so how do you get hold of this software and how secure does it make your e-mail. Well that all depends on where you live. In the United States of America you can use 128 bit encryption but the US government have put an export restriction license on that technology banning it's use outside of the USA. 128 bit encryption is so strong that it would take resources only available to governments and large corporations to crack it. It would still take them impractical amounts of time and they would therefore only attempt to decipher something that they knew to be worthwhile. The encryption technology available outside of the USA is still incredibly strong and only governments would have the resources to crack it if it is implemented properly. As this web site is hosted in the United Kingdom I have only included the export version. The US version is available on the Internet but should only be downloaded if you are a US citizen. The download is approximately 8 MB and the program is freeware. *** Export restrictions have been lifted by the US government and so the link now points to the strong version ***

Click here to download PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)

Click to download the manual in PDF format