

If someone gains access to your computer, your emails are still safe, because only you have the passphrase to decrypt the email messages.Īn email server admin can configure the server to encrypt all email messages at rest for users. GPG is used to encrypt emails at rest.Hackers can’t snoop on your email traffic and extract valuable information. A TLS certificate is used to encrypt email traffic in transit.If you run your own email server, you should know that a TLS certificate can be used to encrypt email traffic between SMTP servers, then why use GPG? You can say you have a PGP key or a GPG key. PGP and GPG are sometimes interchangeable. The software repository of your Linux distribution is also signed by a PGP key, so you can be sure that you are not downloading malware when running commmand sudo apt update or sudo dnf update. You can also use it to digitally sign all your outgoing emails, so the recipient can know the email hasn’t been tampered with. Signing: create digital signatures for signing documents.Encryption: encrypt emails and files like Edward Snowden does every day, so bad actors can’t read your encrypted emails and files.


PGP and GPG are commonly used for two things. Then what is PGP? PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is an encryption program developed in 1991 by Phil Zimmermann. It’s a free alternative to the PGP program. GPG (GNU privacy guard) is an open-source implementation of the OpenPGP protocol. This tutorial series will teach you how to use GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard) in the Linux terminal, so you will be able to send encrypted email messages and digitally sign documents.
