On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, Rob Hudson wrote: > Would anyone mind explaining a little about how PGP works? I > recently installed GnuPG... I vaguely understand the private > key/public key and how they encrypt/decrypt data. I don't know much > how it's used, either. If I encrypt something with my PGP key, and > send it to a friend, will it decrypt by itself, or does the other > person need anything? There are four keys: your public key and your private key and the other person's public and private keys. To send someone encrypted mail, you encrypt it with *their* public key; they decrypt it with their private key. > When I see the public key messages on the > bottom of an email, was that email encrypted? or is that just part > of their sig? It's part of their sig--they're publishing their public key so that you can send *them* encrypted messages. R.
