Encrypt your Gmail Email!

Step 3 Generate Some Keys

Then, I ran the app and it had me generate my two keys (one public, one private). I typed in my secret passphrases which, of course, I will never tell anyone.

The last step with my keys was to select my public key and export it to a text file. Once you do this, you can attach it or copy and paste the contents into an e-mail to send to you PGP/GPG wielding friends.

Comments

[si]

FWIW, I use a combination of a Truecrypt (Windows/OSX/Linux) encrypted volume to store a Keepass (Windows) database to maintain my passwords. There are similar password managers to Keepass for OSX and Linux. This means I only ever have to know one (very strong) password, all my other passwords are generated using Keepass, and are typically 30 random characters (including non alpha-numeric characters) or whatever the maximum number and type allowed by the particular system. This means I don't know my own Gmail password, and because the password database is double encrypted (Truecrypt volume + Keepass db) with AES, I can safely keep it on my USB flash drive, and not be worried if I lose it. The other nice thing about Keepass is you can attach files, so I also have my PGP keys stored in there as well. Yes, it's putting all your eggs in one basket, but it's a redundant, strong and secure basket!

[eecharlie]

So, does this mean that your USB stick holds, in addition to your keepass db in a truecrypt volume, stand-alone & multi-platform versions of both keepass and truecrypt?  Otherwise, wouldn't you only be able to access your passwords (and gmail) if you're on a computer with all that already installed?

And maybe you throw a couple firefox plugins on there while you're at it?

[threecheersfornick]

But aren't you hooped if you lose the usb key? You'd never be able to open your email again.

[si]

Ah...yes, you are correct, but there was one other tool I didn't mention as I didn't want to get too geeky :) I also use a version control system - Subversion - which I use to store (amongst other things) the Keepass database on. This means I can have a (working) copy of the encrypted keepass file in multiple areas, on my usb key, on my home pc, etc. and I use Subversion to keep these up to date. Subversion by default does not transfer or store securely, there are ways around this, but it's not necessary since my Keepass db is encrypted with AES.

[vov35]

hmm... an 'ible on secure subversion perhaps?
or just an explanation...