EasyGPG Help

Encryption is making it essentially impossible for anyone but the intended recipient to read a message. With EasyGPG, you can be sure that only the intended recipient can read the message, and the recipient can be sure that only you could have written it.

A popular way to encrypt email messages and web site posts is to use GPG. GPG is used much less than it should be because some people find it hard to use. EasyGPG makes GPG easier to use.

Encryption is done with keys. Traditionally, the same key was used for encryption and decryption. This created a problem: How can you share the key securely? After all, if you have a communication channel that’s secure enough to transmit the key, why not just use that same channel to send the message?

This problem has been solved with what’s called “public key encryption.” With public key encryption, keys are created in pairs. One key of the pair is used to encrypt, and the other is used to decrypt. The key that encrypts can’t be used to decrypt. What’s more, the information necessary to calculate one key from the other is thrown away after the key pair is created.

This means that you can give your friend one key (the “public” key) and keep the other key of the pair (the “secret” key) a secret. When your friend wants to send you a message, she encrypts it with your public key, and you (the only person who has the corresponding secret key) decrypt it with your secret key. If someone else gets a copy of your public key, it won’t allow her to read the messages intended for you. Even the person who wrote the message to you can’t decrypt the message.

In EasyGPG, the pairs of keys you create are called “personal key pairs.”

Users of EasyGPG will probably choose one of these three options:

Every EasyGPG folder will have (after you double-click Set Up EasyGPG) two folders and three files. One of these folders and one of these files will have names ending with a hyphen (-) followed by the name of the EasyGPG folder. For example, if your EasyGPG folder is called easygpg, you’ll have a file called EasyGPG-easygpg and a folder called EasyGPG-Actions-easygpg.

EasyGPG-easygpg is what’s called a “Desktop file” or “Launcher.” You can move it to the Desktop (or anywhere else in your home folder). Double-clicking it will open the Actions folder that corresponds to it. Dragging and dropping files or folders onto it will do whatever is appropriate. The files in the Actions folder are also Desktop files. The Actions that act on files or folders will also operate on files and folders dropped onto them.

Double-clicking Set Up EasyGPG always rebuilds the Desktop files in that EasyGPG folder, including all the Actions. You should do this whenever you do something that causes the Desktop files to stop working. Desktop files outside the EasyGPG folder that stop working will need to be replaced with new ones built with Set Up EasyGPG or with the Create a Desktop file (launcher) for EasyGPG Action.

Your keyrings are files in which your keys are stored. Unless it’s told not to, GPG will store its keyrings in the (usually invisible) .gnupg folder in your home folder. EasyGPG always keeps your keyrings in a folder called easygpgkeyrings in the same folder as easygpg.sh. With EasyGPG, you can copy keys to and from the main GPG keyring in the .gnupg folder. Key rings are stored this way to make EasyGPG portable. Everything related to EasyGPG is in the same folder. This makes it much easier to migrate to another computer and to use EasyGPG from a flash drive.

Traditionally, people have put their real names and email addresses in their personal key pairs. I think this is a good idea if you share your public key directly with the other person, and you don’t upload it to a keyserver or any other place where everyone can find it. If you do upload your public key, my advice is not to put your real name or your email address in it. My concern here is for privacy.

By uploading your key with your real name and email address in it, you are telling everyone in the world that you exist and what your email address is. You are also inviting unwanted email when you do this. I have received such email.

I also don’t believe in signing keys on keyservers. This simply creates a ready-made list, that anyone in the world can read, of people who know you.

I’m making a point of this here because I want to make it clear that, with EasyGPG, you don’t have to put your email address in your personal key pair (it’s optional), and you don’t have to put your real name there either.

If you make a mistake with your first key pair, don’t worry. You can always delete it and create a new one. There’s no problem with deleting a personal key pair you haven’t shared yet.

Many of us encrypt messages to the same person or group of people again and again. To do this before custom Actions, you had to select the recipients’ keys every time. With custom Actions this is no longer necessary.

You can double-click Create a custom encrypt and copy message Action, enter a name for your new custom Action, and select the keys. This creates a new Action in the EasyGPG folder (not the Actions folder) that you can double-click to encrypt a message without having to select keys. You can drag and drop a text file onto your custom encrypt-a-message Action to include the contents of the text file in your message, just as you can with Encrypt a message and copy it.

Likewise, with the Create a custom encrypt file or folder Action you can create a custom action to save files or folders as encrypted tar archives, encrypted without having to select keys. You can drag and drop a file or folder onto this new custom Action to encrypt it, just as you can with the Save a file or folder as a signed, encrypted tar archive Action.

You can also make any of the Actions in the Actions folder a custom Action. Just drag and drop it onto Drag and drop an Action here to copy it as a custom Action.

You can put a custom Action in the Applications menu by dragging and dropping it onto Drag and drop a custom Action here to put it in the menu.

Drag and drop a custom Action here to remove it removes a custom Action from the EasyGPG folder, from the Applications menu, and even from the Desktop, if you copied it to there.

EasyGPG can update itself from the Internet. Just use Check for a new version of EasyGPG in the EasyGPG-Actions folder.

The update is stored in 2 places: on the EasyGPG eepsite (on I2P), and on archive.org. The new version will be downloaded from the I2P eepsite, if I2P is running. Otherwise it will be downloaded from archive.org. The new version downloaded is signed with my personal key pair to prevent a bogus update from being installed.