digitally signing and encrypting email

[BrentMc]

Hello, I am a reader of Will Wheaton's blog whilwheaton.typepad.com.
under contact it says he prefers his emails to be encrypted or at least digitally signed. he points you to gnupg.org.

Do you guys know about encrypting and digitally signing stuff?

I was hoping to just do it via outlook 2003 when I saw it had settings for digital signatures, but when you look at a contact file under "digital signatures" it appears you have to have it in a file; whereas Wil Wheaton has a key that you are supposed to cut and paste in. It doesn't let you paste a key in that window in outlook.

Can I encrypt and digitally sign without that gnupg program? It looks complicated and I would rather just do it all in outlook. or is there a way to put Will Wheaton's key into a file and import it into outlook? Via outlook I was able to find a provider of free digital signiatures. Thanks for any hints or tips you can provide. -BrentMc

 

[zenophite]

I use thunderbird and there is at least one extension of that program that provides PGP encryption and there may be others.
If you can, try to use open source software and open standards.

 

[Saturn0660]

He wants it that was because he's to cheap to buy antivirus and antispyware.

 

[Alaedhros]

Do you guys know about encrypting and digitally signing stuff?

Yes.

Can I encrypt and digitally sign without that gnupg program? It looks complicated and I would rather just do it all in outlook. or is there a way to put Will Wheaton's key into a file and import it into outlook? Via outlook I was able to find a provider of free digital signiatures. Thanks for any hints or tips you can provide. -BrentMc

All right, it's time to do some reading, boys and girls. Wil Wheaton, bless his nerdy little soul, is talking about encrypting your email with PGP. GnuPG is an implementation of PGP, just like Firefox and IE and Opera and so forth are implementations of web browsers. Now, strictly speaking, you can encrypt and sign without GnuPG, but you will need some sort of implementation of PGP to do so; you may as well just use GnuPG, because I'm sure the others are just as complicated. (You need GnuPG or some other implementation because Microsoft, bless their souls, didn't see fit to include PGP in Outlook.) Go here, download Gpg4win 1.1.3, and install (at least) the GnuPG, WinPT, and GPGol. Then go read the Gpg4win for Novices guide that they wrote. Then go tell Willy that he needs to include some sort of instructions (like, say, the paragraph that I just posted) on his website. (Seriously.)

I use thunderbird and there is at least one extension of that program that provides PGP encryption and there may be others.
If you can, try to use open source software and open standards.

That last sentence really makes you sound like a shill for the FSF. The OP quite specifically asked for help using encryption with Outlook. I don't like Outlook or Windows or closed source as much as the next guy, but there's no point dragging politics into the discussion when the OP really doesn't seem interested (and, moreover, when you haven't even answered the OP's actual question).