PGP Personal Privacy
190 McAfee Office
Basic steps for using PGP Personal Privacy
This section take s a quick look at th e proced ures yo u no rmally follow in the
course of using P GP Personal Privacy.
1. Install P GP on your computer. Refer to the Individual Product Req uirements
in Chapter 2 for compl ete i nstallation instructions.
2. Create a private and public key pair.
Before you c a n begin us ing PGP, yo u need t o generate a key pa ir. A PGP
key pair is composed of a private key to which only you have access and a
public key that you can cop y and make freely available to everyone with
whom you exchan ge information. You have the option of creating a new
key pai r immediately after you have finished the PGP installation
procedure, or yo u can do so at any time by opening the PG Pkeys
application.
3. Ex ch ange public keys w ith others. A fter you h ave created a key pair, you
can begin corresponding with o ther PGP users. You will need a c o py of
their public key and they will need yours. Your publi c key is just a block of
text, so it’s quite easy to trade k eys with someone. You can include you r
public key in a n ema il mes sage, copy it to a file, o r post it on a public or
corporate key server where anyone can get a cop y when they need it.
4. Validate public key s.
Once you have a copy of someone’s public key, you can add it to your
public keyring. You should then check to make sure that the key has no t
been tampered w ith and that it really belongs to the pur po rted owner. You
do this by comparing the unique fingerpri nt on your copy of someone’s
public key t o the fingerprint on that per s on’s o riginal key . W hen you are
sure that you have a valid pu b lic key, yo u s ign it to i ndicate that you feel
the keyis safe to use. In addition,you can grantthe owner of the key a level
of trust indicating how much confidence you have in that person to vouch
for the authenticity of someone else’s public key.
5. Encrypt a nd sign your email a nd files.
After you hav e gene rated your ke y pa ir and have exchanged p u blic keys,
you c an b e gin encrypting a nd signing email me ssages and file s.
• Ifyou are usin g anem ailappli cati on supportedby theplug-ins,you
can encrypt and sign yo ur m essages by selecti ng the appropriate
options from your application’s tool bar.
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