Everyone should know that emails are sent in plain text. This means that anyone snooping around your network (or any network along the way) can potentially view exactly what you've written. What if you need to send sensitive material? Most people know not to send credit card numbers through email. Did you ever think about your address? How many times has a friend or family members asked for your mailing address and you've replied via email? Even this can be considered sensitive material.

There is an option. PGP encryption. We at BMC Networks use GnuPG, GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard. A great implementation for Windows users is the GPG4Win project that comes complete with installer, key manager, plugin for Microsoft Outlook 2003 (email encryption) and a plugin for Microsoft Explorer (file encryption).

Here we'll show you how to setup Mozilla Thunderbird to send encrypted email on Windows. We pick Thunderbird because it is rapidly becoming the email client of choice. If you use outlook, GPG4Win has a built in Outlook plugin to get you going. (Not for Outlook Express).

You'll need to download:
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- GPG4Win
- Enigmail thunderbird add-on. (save to a location you can remember, like your desktop)

First install GPG4Win. Then install Mozilla Thunderbird email client.


In Thunderbird, click tools then Add-ons.

Click the "Install" button 

Find the Enigmail extension you saved to your Desktop and select it. 

Click the "Install Now" button 

Thunderbird tells you that the extension will be installed when Thunderbird is restarted. Close Thunderbird and start it up again. 

Notice the new menu item at the top. This is where you import, search, manage public keys and create your own public/private key pair.

Once you've imported your contact's public keys, it's simple to send an encrypted / digitally signed email!

Thunderbird with Encryption support  is now installed. Just import your contacts' public keys
using the key manager and start sending encrypted email.

Did you find this helpful?  Let us know!