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| DATE | 2013-06-14 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] secure mail - and security
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http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/send-signed-encrypted-email-evolution-linux/
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How To Send Signed & Encrypted Email With Evolution [Linux]
June 6, 2011
By Danny Stieben
send encrypted emailIn today’s technological world, sending
encrypted messages between people has become an increasing standard. For
web browsers, this has turned into a common practice, as SSL connections
are constantly being used for banks and other sites that often transmit
sensitive data. However, this practice has not been widely adopted for
email communications, which is still a prime means of communication,
contrary to popular belief. Yes, social media sites are a new way to
communicate, but emails are still dominant. In order to secure your
email communications, you need to sign and/or encrypt your emails.
In Linux, this is an easy task to accomplish, thanks to the presence of
an easy-to-use key-generation program and a capable email client.
Evolution, the default email client for the GNOME desktop, is a very
capable contender to Thunderbird. For GNOME users, Evolution offers the
desktop integration (for both GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 (other article)) that
Thunderbird cannot offer by default. So for some it may be advantageous
to use Evolution.
Preconditions
In order to be able to sign and encrypt your email, you will need to
create your own key set. For instructions on that, you can read one of
our other articles that covers the topic. Signing your email only
requires your own key, while encrypting your email requires that both
you and the recipient have each others’ public key. Remember, you
use the private key to encrypt, others use your public key to decrypt.
Setup
To get started, open up Evolution and go to your Preferences in the Edit
menu. Double click on the account you want to enable PGP Security and go
to the Security tab. In there, you’ll be able to enter the Key ID of
your key set so that Evolution knows which key to grab when you write
with a certain email address. Remember, you can have multiple email
addresses on the same key, which is recommended to avoid confusion.
Ideally a person should use one key, or two if they want to separate
personal from business. If you wish, you can also set the defaults
below, whether you would like to have certain options enabled each time
to write a new message.
send encrypted email
Further Info
That’s all you have to do to set it up. When you write a new
message, you can change the options that you have set my default in the
Options menu, so if you don’t encrypt your email by default (as you
probably don’t have a key from everyone you send an email to), you
can still enable it for that specific message.
how to encrypt email
If, let’s say, the person receiving the message is also using
Evolution, he or she will see a message like this:
send encrypted email
You see a message like above (“Signature exists, but need public
key”), that means that the message is signed, but you have not
imported the public key of the person who sent it. This can be done in
the program that handles keys.
Encrypted messages won’t have a specific message, but will be
decrypted on-the-fly provided that all the keys needed are available.
Conclusion
Protecting your email communications is a great thing to do in a world
where almost anything unencrypted can be sniffed. However, not only do
PGP keys help encrypt email, but they can also simply sign email so that
you can verify that the email truly came from the party they claim to
be. Doing that can often times be enough to feel safe about the emails
you receive. Why companies that are constantly used in scams, such as
banks and PayPal, aren’t using it to prove that the emails actually
came from them, I do not know.
Do you think PGP signing/encryption is or will soon be a necessary
security step? Are you already following this practice or will be in the
future? Let us know in the comments!
Image Credit: Shutterstock
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