. There are ways to improve this state of affairs. What is required in return is a bit 'initial commitment to configure the new system, patience and more each time you send a message "protected".

The basis of all is the standard OpenPGP, a public-key encryption protocol originally created by Phil Zimmerman in 1991. With OpenPGP, and application GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard), downloadable for free, which puts him at work, you can encrypt / decrypt messages, digitally sign and verify the signatures of others, create and exchange public key certificates.

After you install GnuPG, the next step depends on the mail client we use. If it's Thunderbird, the program project Mozilla, you must install Enigmail, the plug-in that represents the 'graphical interface allows you to configure GnuPG and use from within the mail program.

In principle, the setup procedure is as follows: you must first create a new pair of encryption keys and assign it to one of our e-mail account who will be empowered with new features. Very important and indispensable for our security is the choice of a passphrase when generating the keys, without which you can not use OpenPGP.

At this point the work, we are in possession of a new Key ID, a string of 8 alphanumeric characters that uniquely identifies our public key. It may be published on public servers (such as pool.sks-keyservers.net) and be available to everyone.

Now that the system is configured you can send the first message encrypted. First, it is preferable to write messages in plain text, and without the use of HTML. Now select the option Encrypt the message and pressing the Enter key, a new window appears in which will be asked to enter the passphrase. After you have successfully built the field, the contents of the message will be encrypted and sent to the recipient.

With the same ease you can put your signature on the message, choosing Sign the message, so we can assure the recipient that the message comes just myself. In a mirror, through Enigmail, receiving encrypted messages and / or signed happens transparently, because the keys are controlled on the fly and, if valid, shall automatically decode and display the owner's digital signature.

There are of course different ways to use OpenPGP in other programs for e-mail: EudoraGPG is the plug-in for Eudora, ez-pine-gpg is a set of scripts, which allows the use of encryption with Pine, GNU Anubis is a processor SMTP for outgoing messages, using the interface GPGME to work; GPGOE is the plug-in for Outlook Express; GPGrelay runs under Windows and adds support to encrypt all mail programs; Mailcrypt works under Emacs; Squirrelmail Plugin him ago with the server webmail Squirrelmail.

For more information about configuring Enigmail, you may refer to the documentation online, but if interested in details on asymmetric cryptography can see on the Wikipedia entry.