Several years ago I tried to get everyone I knew to use encrypted email and I failed miserably. I don’t know if it was too hard for them to set up or if there was a false sense of security about email. Maybe it was just to weird and nerdy for the time.
Everyone should know that other people can, and probably are, reading your email. Unencrypted email is not secure. More and more, people are using email services like Gmail, that archive email and never delete it. (You did know that Gmail doesn’t really delete anything, didn’t you?) so chances are if you send an email, it’s out there in the Internet forever.
Peter of Firearms & Freedom IM’d me tonight about his success with FireGPG on a memory stick and our conversation turned to email encryption. It got me thinking that maybe it’s time to start pushing the encrypted email meme again.
I’d like to encourage everyone that sends email to me to please use my public key and encrypt the message. You should also generate your own public key and use it.
If you search for my keys at pgp.mit.edu you’ll see several. There is one that doesn’t expire that I created back in 2001, but I learned from that mistake and now put an expiration date on all my keys. This key is still good. I’ve also created a new key for this blog, and there is a link to it over on the sidebar.
