Encrypting one’s email–and messages–seems a bit paranoid, yet I find myself doing so for stuff I just don’t want to drop in “plain text” in my inbox. As access to the cloud makes it easier to save stuff there, I find myself wanting to store some of my important documents.

Update 01/3/2012: I now recommend the free, open source AESCrypt in lieu of AxCrypt/NCrypt as a simple, easy to use cross-platform encryption tool; use it on your email attachments (e.g. MS Word documents, etc). Find out more here.

My first experiences with Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and later, GPG, were a pain in the rear. Setting up keys and all the mumbo jumbo never seemed to make much sense. What’s worse, I could never find anyone to share my encrypted documents with (except for Wes Fryer and a security-conscious principal I worked for and mentored in all things DOS).

Since I use GPG encryption/decryption on every platform–Mac, Linux, Windows–I feel pretty comfortable encrypting material to myself that I wouldn’t want folks to read or access.

By the way, you can find my public key online here.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure