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PGPFrom CryptoDox, The Online Encyclopedia on Cryptography and Information Security(Redirected from Pretty Good Privacy)
PGP is a program that gives your electronic mail something that it otherwise doesn't have: Privacy. It does this by encrypting your mail so that nobody but the intended person can read it. When encrypted, the message looks like a meaningless jumble of random characters. PGP has proven itself quite capable of resisting even the most sophisticated forms of analysis aimed at reading the encrypted text. PGP can also be used to apply a digital signature to a message without encrypting it. This is normally used in public postings where you don't want to hide what you are saying, but rather want to allow others to verify that the message actually came from you. Once a digital signature is created, it is impossible for anyone to modify either the message or the signature without the modification being detected by PGP. PGP is very widely available, so much so that a separate FAQ has been written by Micheal Paul Johnson for answering this question. It is called, Where to get the Pretty Good privacy program (PGP); it is posted in alt.security.pgp regularly, is in the various FAQ archive sites, and is also available online. External Links |