Protect Your Privacy

From William Stallings, one of the all time best-selling authors in the communications field.

Electronic mail is used to send all kinds of messages: legal correspondence, electronic love letters, business information, personal messages, and countless others. Yet it is relatively easy to invade and eavesdrop on these messages or to impersonate another user and send false messages. The solution to these problems is Pretty Good Privacy (PGP).

PGP is a software package that does three tings:

1. Encrypts messages sent by electronic mail so that only the sender and receiver can read the message.
2. Signs messages so that a receiver is guaranteed that the message comes from the alleged sender and is not sent by an impostor.
3. Encrypts stored files so that only the user can read the file.

PGP is available as freeware for DOS^™, Windows^™, Macintosh^®, Amiga, UNIX^®, and other systems.

In Protect Your Privacy: A Guide for PGP Users, William Stallings:

• explains how to send and receive PGP messages, independent of your operating system
• explains in a step-by-step manner the subtleties of key management and how to deal with the options
• shows how PGP can be used for personal file security
• covers all the cryptographic concepts a general user needs to know.

1. Protect Your Privacy
1. What is PGP?
2. PGP Versions
• Part 1: How PGP Works
2. Basic Principles of PGP
1. Conventional Encryption
2. Public Key Encryption
3. Secure Hash Functions
3. Sending and Receiving PGP Messages
1. PGP: The Big Picture
2. PGP is Not E-Mail
3. Public Keys and Private Keys
4. Digital Signatures
5. Compression
6. Message Encryption
7. E-Mail Compatibility
8. The Order of Operations in PGP
4. PGP Features
1. Multiple Reciptients
2. Encrypting Local Files
3. The Display-Only Option
4. Wiping
5. Protecting Text Files
6. Signature Options
5. Key Generation and Secret Key Management
1. Creating Public/Secret Key Pairs
2. Secret Key Management
6. Public Key Management
1. Exchanging Public Keys
2. Certifying Public Keys
3. Owner Trust and Key Legitimacy
• Part 2: Using PGP
7. DOS PGP: Getting Started
1. Getting Started
2. Key Generation
3. Signing Your Key
4. Extracting Your Key
5. Preparing a Message for Transmission
6. Processing a Received Message
7. Adding Keys to Your Public Key Ring
8. Certifying PGP
8. DOS PGP Reference
1. Message/File Processing
2. Key Management
3. Miscellaneous Commands and Options
4. The config.txt File
5. Using a DOS Shell
9. Macintosh PGP: Getting Started
1. Getting Started
2. Key Generation
3. Signing Your Key
4. Extracting Your Key
5. Preparing a Message for Transmission
6. Processing a Received Message
7. Adding Keys to Your Public Key Ring
8. Certifying MacPGP
10. Macintosh PGP Reference
1. PGP Messages Window
2. Help Menu
3. File Menu
4. Key Menu
5. Options Menu
11. Windows PGP
1. WinPGP
2. PGP WinFront
• Part 3:Supplemental Information
12. The Building Blocks of PGP
1. Conventional Encryption: IDEA
2. Public-Key Encryption: RSA
3. Secure Hash Function: MD5
13. Choosing Your Passphrase
1. How to Guess a Passphrase
2. How to Choose an Unguessable Passphrase
14. Where to Get PGP
15. Public Key Servers
1. How to Use Public Key Servers
2. Where to Find Public Key Servers
3. Stable Large EMail Database (SLED)

I like Stallings, but this is pure trash.