[Enigmail] Initial Setup

[Jan Kohnert]

Frank Swatland schrieb:
> I just set up an Enigmal Account in Thunderbird 2.0 and uploaded my
> public key.

Wellcome! Your message verified well here, so it seems all went fine. 

> What I don't understand is how do I send my Public Code to another user?

This was already done by uploading your public key to a keyserver. No 
interaction needed anymore.

> Do they have to have a Thunderbird Application? So if I send an
> encrypted email to fswat at yahoo.com how does that person get my Public
> Code and what does he or she have to have or what will he/she have to do
> to un-encrypt my email?

Well, signing and encrypting works a bit different: You sign with your private 
key and verification is done with your public key which is available. 
Encrypting is done with your recipients public key (and most probably also 
your own, if you want to be able to read you sent mail again) and decrypting 
is done with the private key, so one is only able to decrypt mail if the 
recipients private key is available. As long as the private keys are save 
(which we all hope), only the recipient (and you, if you encrypted with your 
key, too) can read the message.

However, it is not mandatory to use Thunderbird, most (at least nearly(?) all 
open source) mail user agents (MUAs) are able to use GnuPG naturally or with 
a plugin like enigmail to be able to verify or decrypt messages.

Feel free to send me an encrypted test message off list to see if it works. 
And keep your private key save. ;)

-- 
MfG Jan
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