Help on encrypting an E-mail

Did you know that an E-mail is like a postal card? Anyone who has it in hands can read it's contents - and in the internet many routers, many switches and people can take a hold on to the intimate words you are writing.

If you wrap the letter into an envelope you can protect unauthorised people from scanning it's contents. An analogous to an envelope is to use encryption methods.

What do you need? There are some general information at Versign who issues digital IDs. All you need to do is to get hold on my "public key" and use it to encrypt your message to me. Anybody can get this public key, as the decryption is done with another key - the private key, which only I posess. When I get your encrypted mail I will use this private key to decrypt it and read your message. And the best thing is: nobody else will be able to sneak into your lines.

Please don't be afraid, as it may sound very complicated to you, but it must not be, as you don't need to understand all the details of how it works.

How to get my public key with Nescape Communicator, version 4.5

Start the Netscape Communicator E-mail client and follow these steps:

Choose menu "Communicator/Tools/Security Info".
Click on "People" at the left hand side of the screen.
Scroll down and click "Search directory".
As "Directory" choose "Verisign Directory" and as "E-mail address" enter "eih@eih.cc" (or any other from any other person you want to encrypt your mails to). Then click "Search".
If found, the public key will be transferred automatically to your "key database".
Click some "OK"s in order to finish this process until you get back to the normal user screen.

You will need a password to access this database (to inhibit other people using your PC sending mail and signing messages with your signature - this is something else you can do in case you have an own digital ID).

You have to import my public key only once, but you always will have to enter the "key database password" when you send an encrypted mail.

To encrypt a message you just write your message as usual and then click on the lower button (there are three buttons to the left of the "to:", ... fields in the top third of the new mail screen) and select "Encrypted". At some stage you'll have to enter the password for the key database. That's it: When you send the mail, it will take some additional seconds to be sent because the encryption demands a little overhead, but the additional security should be worth it.

Further information

The following link leads to where much more information can be found.

On the website of much more information is available - you can get there free test certificates.