Make Gmail More secure, using GPG encryption

Gmail is the mail provider that that the biggest today. I my self using gmail for receive or sending email for my friend and another use. How about you?

But, Who knows, there are a holes or something bad bug that make gmail not secure anymore. So, for make it secure when you using it, try GPG encryption. If you use this, your account and email more secure from attacker in cyber.

Don't forget to install it in your system, and activated it. No more compromised for another bugs.


Perhaps Google's announcement that Chinese cyber attackers went after human rights activists' Gmail accounts has made you skittish about just how private your own messages are on the Google e-mail service.

Well, if you want to take a significant step in keeping prying eyes away from your electronic correspondence, one good encryption technology that predates Google altogether is worth looking at. It's called public key encryption, and I'm sharing some instructions on how to get it working if you want try it.

Unfortunately, better security typically goes hand in hand with increased inconvenience. But some human rights activists who used Gmail right now likely wish they'd put up with a little hardship to help keep hackers at bay. I'm not going so far as to recommend you use e-mail encryption, but I think this is a good time to take a close look at it.

Specifically, I'll show here how to use a collection of free or open-source software packages: GPG, or GNU Privacy Guard, Mozilla Messaging's Thunderbird e-mail software, and its Enigmail plug-in. CNET Download.com also hosts Thunderbird for Windows and Mac and Enigmail for all platforms.

But first, some background about how it works.

Public key cryptography
Encryption scrambles messages so that only someone with a key (or a tremendous amount of computing horsepower, or knowledge of how to exploit an encryption weakness) can decode them. One form is called, curiously, public key encryption, and this is what GPG and Enigmail use.

Here's the quick version of how it works. You get a private key known only to yourself and a public key that's available for anyone else to use. The person you're corresponding with also has such a pair of keys. Although the public and private keys are mathematically related, you can't derive one from the other.

To send a private message, someone encrypts it with your public key; you then decrypt it with your private key. When it's time to reply, you encrypt your message with the recipient's public key and the recipient decodes it with his or her private key.

Messages in transit from one machine to another are a bunch of textual gobbledygook until decoded. If you're being cautious enough to encrypt your e-mail, you should be aware that there's still some information that leaks out to the outside world. The subject line isn't encrypted, and somebody might take interest in the identity of your active e-mail contacts and the timing and frequency of communications.

So how do you find out what your correspondent's public key is? You can either fetch the key firsthand from the correspondent, or you search for it on public computers on the Net called key servers--mine is stored at pool.sks-keyservers.net.

This form of encryption has another advantage: you can sign your e-mail electronically so the recipient knows it really is from you. This time the process works in reverse: you sign your e-mail with your private key, then your recipient verifies it's from you using your public key.

Drawbacks aplenty
Weighed against the encryption advantages of privacy and message signing is the fact that you'll lose access to service you may like or depend on.

When you see an encrypted e-mail in the Web-based Gmail, it's gibberish. Google doesn't index it, so Gmail search doesn't work. And the strong points of cloud computing--reading your e-mail from your mobile phone, your friend's computer, a computer kiosk on the airport--isn't possible. You're once again anchored to your PC with the encryption software installed.

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