PGP

Pretty Good Privacy or PGP is a public key encryption program that has become the most popular standard for email encryption - it follows the OpenPGP standard (RFC 4880) for encrypting and decrypting data.

Pretty Good Privacy uses a variation of the public key system- each user has an encryption key that is publicly known and a private key that is known only to that user. To send encrypted messages you need the public key of your recipient. To decrypt a message sent to you, you will use your private key to decrypt it.

To explain how sending/receiving such encrypted message works, let's set and example with two users, Jerry and Clara:

• Jerry generates a PGP keypair for his email directly in eM Client and selects his passphrase
• Jerry sends the public part of his keypair to Clara

• Clara receives Jerry's email with his public key and is asked if she wants to import Jerry's key to eM Client

Clara import the key and from now on, she can send Jerry encrypted emails.

• She composes a new email.
• Adds Jerry to recipients.
• Clicks on the encrypt icon in toolbar, which is available because she has her own keypair setup.
• And sends the message

• The message is sent through the internet completely encrypted, and only Jerry is able to read it
• Jerry receives the encrypted email, types the right password and is able to read the message

Find more instructions on creating keys and managing them in the Certificates and Keys section.