3 ms·
Usability is a key issue. My employer requires that emails with certain types of content be sent with a GPG signature. I spent a few hours today figuring out
by Osiris 8y ago
Usability is a key issue.
My employer requires that emails with certain types of content be sent with a GPG signature. I spent a few hours today figuring out the best way to do it. First, I used the CLI to < echo "..." | gpg --clear-sign > and paste that into Gmail (web), but the receiver didn't know how to verify the signature (Mac Mail with GPG Tools).
Eventually I settled on Thunderbird with an add-on. It took some googling because the add-on defaulted to "Junior" mode. Eventually, I was able to send emails both signed and encrypted.
So, the issue to me is that there needs to be a standard that can be easily integrated into commonly used communication tools, like Gmail, SMS, etc.
Private key portability is also a problem. I have a USB-C yubikey, and it works on my laptop and my phone. Once USB-C becomes common, maybe carrying your private keys around with you will be much easier.
- caro_douglos 8y agoI like keybase.io for this. I don't recommend gpg stuff to non-techs...except when it's fairly straight forward, they do a good job. No affiliation with them. Just have an account and dig their ability to make pgp less intimidating. I'm looking forward to a chip implant from yubikey on their next gen!
- nickpsecurity 8y agoAsk if they'll let you send text and zip files as attachments instead. You just save the file, use the encrypt file option, an encrypted file is generated, and attach that to the email. The receiver does gpg -d (file). It's how I use it. Let's me ignore most of GPG complexity and its potential risks. Also, I use zip with obscure names to hide content type. Just make extra, extra sure you click the encrypted file in attach dialog, not original. It can help to put them in different directories.