After trying to interest my friends to no avail, I'm seeking further afield to find a few people that I can explore encryption/privacy communications with. I don't have anything in particular to hide nor anything in particular to discuss, outside of the topic here, I just think it might be a good idea to learn more about protecting privacy. Applications I've looked into and learned something about are encrypted email, the Tor web browser, and encrypted "chat", specifically Pidgin and Jitsi.

Although not specifically about "communications", when Windows XP went out of date, I switched to a lightweight linux system, which uses less resources on my old computers and tends to be much more secure from outside prying than Windows, so I have information about that if anyone is interested.

The first thing I want to get up to speed with is "encrypted email." I've found a free, small, portable (doesn't need to be installed) app, "gpg4usb", that works on Windows and linux systems. You can read more about it here, but the short version is this: gpg4usb isn't an email application per se but is a sort of text editor that allows one to encrypt and decrypt text. After encrypting a text, using the same standard as Pretty Good Privacy, one can then copy and paste it to any email app, either a stand-alone one on your computer or a web email, like gmail. Same goes for decrypting, in reverse. If you're new to the subject, you'll need to read some explanation about "public and private keys", which is how one encrypts a message that is intended for one other person without the need to exchange "passwords". It's quite an ingenious method but a little confusing at first. A good place to start is the link above. (And there is no need to use gpg4usb -- it's just the one I've been learning to use and seems to have a lot of virtue in being "portable" and quick to get up to speed with.) There's actually not much to it, and I suppose it's really not necessary to have correspondents to practice with, but sending encrypted email to myself and then decrypting them hasn't yet given me a very good idea of using it practically, in terms of ease and speed.

Of course we can talk about email and other privacy apps here in posts, but I'm providing my email (and also my "public key", for those who already know what this means) below so people can contact me and start to play around with encrypted email.

Thanks and "be talking to you",

Fred
[email protected]
Get my public key at:
https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=ge...FBB6D191EEF3CD