PGP, or "Pretty Good Privacy", allows e-mails to be securely encrypted so that credit-card details etc. cannot be read by third parties. It also has a 'signing' feature that protects messages against tampering and can be used to determine who the author of an e-mail really is.
In brief, PGP works via a system of public and private key pairs. To encrypt a message you use the addressee's public key. That message can then only be read by using the corresponding private key. Only the addressee will have the private key; you can download public keys from web sites or special key servers. The idea is that you only use a person's public key if you really are sure that it is theirs.
Hopefully use of this system should allay the fears any customers who are worried about sending credit-card information via e-mail. PGP can be made to work with any e-mail system, and for some programs special plug-ins are available to make encrypting and signing messages particularly easy. Turnpike (which we use and can recommend) and Microsoft Outlook are two such e-mail systems.
PGP can be downloaded from the Internet and is free for personal use. It also comes included when you buy e-mail packages such as Turnpike.
George Lund
16 April 2000
| PGP in the USA: | http://www.pgp.com/ |
| PGP everwhere else: | http://www.pgpi.org/ |
| PGP download: | http://www.pgpi.org/products/pgp/versions/freeware/ |
| PGP introduction: | http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/ |