Making email a little more secure

Every so often I try to make an effort to increase the security surrounding the technology I use. Its usually after I read a notable CVE bulletin, or hear of the latest hack. I’ve been wanting a more secure solution to webmail for the longest time, but knew I didn’t have many options if I enjoyed using webmail clients. They’re just so darn convenient. After enabling two-factor authentication on everything I could, I still was looking for a better solution for encrypted email. I like the project mailpile, but they’re not as far along yet in features for my needs. (Consider donating if you value secure email!) I ended up going back to a local mail client (Thunderbird), which I’ve connected to my webmail accounts, and downloaded the Enigmail add-on for OpenPGP encryption and digital signing.

Once I installed the add-on, it was pretty easy to get started. There’s a setup wizard that will either create you a new PGP/GPG2 key, or you can select to use an existing key already:

I selected advanced, and picked an existing GPG2 key I have already. It imported it in one step, and I was ready to go. Next, a test email to myself to test enabling a digital signature (I had to manually accept my own key as “trusted” once I received the mail):

And writing an encrypted mail was just as easy:

The Enigmail plugin makes it easy to add others to your GPG circle of trust, and GPG2 encrypted email is a now click away.