[colug-432] Keysigning Party at OLF

[Aaron Toponce]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2011 at 01:15:37PM -0400, Bill Baker wrote:
> Encrypting your mail and signing your mail are two different things.  If
> you encrypt your e-mail, you have to make sure that the other person has
> your public key or they won't be able to read it.  Here's a link to get
> PGP working in Thunderbird (for Windows, but easily translated to
> Linux):
>
> http://www.encryptedemail.org/how-to-encrypt-your-email-using-thunderbird-and-pgp/
>
> On Sat, 2011-09-03 at 13:07 -0400, Steve VanSlyck wrote:
> > A wider question. If I start encryping my mail and sending with keys n
> > such, how do I send mail to others, that don't have my key? Do I have to
> > reset mail options n such? (Thunderbird).

Not quite. Encrypting is handled with public keys, while decrypting is
handled with private keys. If you want to encrypt something to me, then you
need my public key. After using my public key to encrypt your message, I
then use my private key to decrypt it. If public keys decrypted messages,
imagine how many people could decrypt your private message. :)

Signing, however, is handled with private keys, and verification is handled
with public keys. If I sign a document (this mail for example), then I did
so with something only I have- my public key. Then, you can download my
public key from a keyserver, and verify that the signature is valid.

Hope that helps.

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