I just found out a thing that makes using PGP with GMail on a Mac easier.
The problem: PGP encrypting an email means that, at the time of hitting the “send” button, the computer where the plain text message is stored needs to have your secret key and the public key of the recipient, and in general webmail (like GMail) means that the message is actually resident on a computer that is far away from the one that’s attached to your keyboard. There’s a manual workaround for this, but it’s a pain in the neck and anyone using it will not wonder why PGP isn’t more common.
Also, I love the way that with GMail (and other webmail services) I can get to my email messages even when I’m far away from my computer. That’s why I have never hooked the Mail app up to my GMail account; because I didn’t want to download my mail and then have it unavailable on the web. But I accidentally hooked it up last night and nowadays it uses IMAP instead of POP, which means that the messages can stay on Google’s servers but I can now use the GPG plugin to encrypt and sign my emails with ease. And you can, too:
- First, get GPGTools. You’ll want that.
- If you don’t already have a key pair, generate one.
- Hook up Mail.app to your GMail account:
- Feel good about the security of your shit.
