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Your e-mail can generally be read by approx. 8 persons:
1) Your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
2) Your mailserver's administrator
3) John from the U.S. FBI
4) Mailserver's ISP
5) Recipient's mailserver ISP
6) Recipient's mailserver administrator
7) Recipient's ISP
8) Recipient

In case you use the magic words "death to America or f* your mom Bush" in your letter, then you can multiply this list by 2.

By default E-Mail is being sent unencrypted as well as passwords. To improve security we recommend to use Firefox together with plugin - customisegoogle, which completely encrypts the session with GMail.

It is recommended to use Mozilla Thunderbird to access your GMail account. In this case everything to pop.gmail.com server and from smtp.gmail.com is encrypted. But what's the meaning if everything BETWEEN mail servers is being sent unencrypted?

There's a solution - Asymmetric cryptography. STOP - don't be afraid of these terms. Basically it just means that mails get encrypted. This is what PGP is for. PGP is short for "Pretty Good Privacy". This is encryption system which uses patented algorithms, which makes them unavailable for everyday's use, but it can still be used for free by home users.

To avoid these patents GNU has created an alternative - GPG - GNU Privacy Guard. This system uses other algorithms, therefore it's not compatible with PGP.

Using GPG it's possible to attach electronic-signature to your mail or fully encrypt your mail, which allows the recipient to be sure that the sender is really you, not somebody who just uses a fake "from" field.

Using your private and Peter's public key you'll be able to send mail to Peter which only he will be able to read. To do that, you need your private (secret) key and Peter's public one. It's similar with mobile phones - to call Peter you have to take your phone and enter PIN code. Then you find his number (His public key). To be able to receive calls you need to give your public key to somebody who wants to call you (You need to upload your public key to the keyserver). Of course, you'll not give away your PIN code (Private key).

LET'S BEGIN

First we need several files (GnuPG, Mozilla Thunderbird, Enigmail plugin):

1. ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/bin ary/gnupg-w32cli-1.4.2.exe
2. http://download.mozilla.org/?p roduct=thunderbird-1.5rc1&os=w in
3. http://www.mozilla-enigmail.or g/downloads/enigmail-0.93.0-tb 15-win32.xpi

Install GnuGP. The installation will be in C:\Program Files\GnuPG but all keys will be in C:\Documents and Settings\%%USER%%\Application

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