OpenPGP

Introduction

The email service in the Private Cyberspace Data Node comes with its own Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) based encryption software, allowing easy encryption of data like emails WITHOUT needing the exchange of a encryption keys between the sender and receiver.

PGP has a colourful history and was even considered by the US government as a munition once. Today it remains a highly effective security tool.

Snappymail

Snappymail (the web browser email software that come in all Private Cyberspaces Data Nodes) supports three ways of using OpenPGP.

  • GnuPG
  • Mailvelope
  • OpenPGP.js

None of them is perfect, but some end-to-end encryption is better than none for certain private emails. Mailvelope is enabled by default on most Private Cyberspaces, ask your Information Entities to see whether they support the other 2 OpenPGP methods.

Mailvelope

Although Mailvelope is open sourced and has been audited in the past, it DOES collect analytics which needs to be turned OFF.

Key Servers

The 88.io incubator runs a openpgp key server pgp.88.io using:

There are other alternative OpenPGP Key Servers:

  1. https://hockeypuck.io/
    Used by https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/

  2. keys.openpgp.org / hagrid ยท GitLab
    Used by https://keys.openpgp.org/

  3. GitHub - SKS-Keyserver/sks-keyserver: OpenPGP keyserver
    Used by https://sks-keyservers.net/

  4. GitHub - ctubio/php-proxy-keyserver: PHP proxy and extensible web interface forwarding standard HKP requests to a local or remote SKS OpenPGP Keyserver.

Unlike traditional Key Servers you can verify you the Email Address and OpenPGP key you got using Geo Attest.