How is it useful?
In PGP, each person (or email address) has a keypair: a public key and a private key. The public key is published and given to anyone who wishes to communicate with you - there is no danger in posting it on-line or in "phonebook" like key directory servers. The private key on the other hand remains private and secret.
Using your public key, anyone can send you a message which will be unreadable to anyone but you. That includes your ISP, Google, Facebook, the hacker next door and even the NSA. Whether the message is sent over email, chat, a social network or just placed in a file is not important.
In addition, you can use your private key to digitally sign messages: this way anyone that has your public key (remember, it is publi) can know it really came from you.
About PGP
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) was initially created by Phil Zimmerman in 1991 as a means to provide encryption for email messages and as a mean of decentralized authenticity and identity verification.
Over the years, the OpenPGP standard was created and is now implemented by many different programs, many of which are free and open-source, are available based on it.
OpenPGP based tools can be used to send secure messages, encrypt private data and verify the origin and integrity of messages and data with extremely high security.
While once considered a complex product usable only by experts, in recent years OpenPGP tools have evolved into being usable by anyone and on any device.
How secure is it?
OpenPGP encrypted messages are extremely secure, provided that you do one thing: keep your secret key safe.
OpenPGP is based on the same mathematical algorithms used by banks and governments to encrypt communications. There are no known efficient methods to break messages encrypted using these techniques, and given the current power of computers, using an inefficient "brute force" method to break one message will take years of the worlds total computing power combined.
Again, this is true as long as you keep your private key safe by never sending it to anyone and protecting it with a passphrase - which is no different than keeping your credit card PIN safe.
PGP: Digital Privacy for Everyone!
The "migration" of our social life as well as our professional interaction to the Internet has created a host of challanges. Among others, a major concern is to our privacy: is our private data really private? How can one ensure that information considered private or even secret is not open to the prying eyes of criminals, commercial entities, government agencies or just random strangers? As it turns out, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a privacy and authenticity verification solution has existed and has been evovling since 1991. Perhaps it is time to give it a try?
PGP tools provide secure communication using strong encryption methods which are virtually unbreakable
