In an earlier column, we went over the basics of creating key-pairs: the public and secret versions of your GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) keys. But if you're a government employee who wants to become a whistle-blower and report corruption, evil-doers, or gross mismanagement, you'll need to do more than create your keys. You'll need to encrypt and sign the email you send me with your exposé.

A private key is just that: private. You protect it. You don't share it, don't publish it, and don't email it to friends. You need access to your private key -- that's when you're asked for your passphrase -- when you:

* Read data encrypted with your public key
* Create a digital signature

By Joe Barr at Linux.com

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