Encryption

Encryption is a process of transforming your important information into a unreadable form so that only your intended recipients can decrypt and read it.

From main menu, choose "Privacy > Encrypt" to enter this screen. Once entered, you will be presented with a form to enter necessary data to encrypt:

On the toolbar, there are two buttons -- Accept and Start Over. Start Over button is used to clear out the form if you do something wrong and want to start over. Accept is used to start the encryption process after you have filled out the encryption data form.

Once the encryption is done, the output will be saved into a file if you have specified one. At the same time, the output will also be sent to the data area. The output looks something similar to this:

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
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=Kte2
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
            

As you can see, this does not make much sense to human eyes. If your original information is an e-mail to one of your friends, now it is the time you cut and paste the encrypted e-mail or attach the output file and send it to him/her. With the encryption, you are confident your information is safe traveling on the Internet. No one should be able to read it except your friend who has the key to decrypt it.

Finally do not edit anything between the encrypted output. It is fine to insert or append anything before and after the encrypted output without affecting the integrity of the message. This means, if you cut and paste the encrypted output into your e-mail to your friend, you can insert several lines of plain text before the encrypted information to remind your friend this is an encrypted e-mail that should be decrypted before reading. Of course, you should not reveal your concealed message in the inserted plain text. Otherwise, encryption loses its intended meaning.