PGP is a free state-of-the-art encryption system that allows you to protect your information either while it is stored as a file in your computer or during transmission as email. The algorithms used are highly sophisticated and are widely considered to be very secure even when being attacked by some of the alphabet-soup agencies of the U.S. Federal Government. And yet, it allows you to send encrypted email or files to people you have never met.
Early versions of PGP were pretty user-unfriendly but later versions have a point-and-click graphical user interface and are well integrated with many email clients such as Windows Eudora (you can download Windows Eudora Lite for free) or Microsoft Outlook. After using PGP Personal Privacy for a bit, you will encrypt your email almost as easily as you send it unencrypted.
The best way to learn to use PGP Personal Privacy is to install it on your system and start using it. You can download a copy for free at http://www.pgpi.org/. There are free versions, and source code if you're interested, for just about any computing platform you can name. It is recommended that you use a version from that website rather than a commercial site since the publishers of later versions of PGP are refusing to release source code.
Once you have a copy of PGP installed on your system, you will need to come up with a secure but easy to remember passphrase. This is a complex subject so you need to go to another web page to read about passphrases.
Good luck. If you need any assistance or have any questions, send email to wepin@wepin.com.
Copyright at Common Law, West El Paso Information Network, 1999