What is Pretty Good Privacy?
'''Pretty Good Privacy''' (PGP) is a [[computer program]] that provides [[Cryptography|cryptographic]] [[WP:PRIVACY|privacy]] and [[authentication]]. PGP is often used for [[Digital signature|signing]], [[Encryption|encrypting]] and [[Decryption|decrypting]] electronic mails (e-mails) to increase the security of [[e-mail]] [[communication]]s. It was originally created by [[Phil Zimmermann]] in 1991. PGP and other similar products follow the '''OpenPGP''' standard ([[Rfc:4880|RFC 4880]]) for encrypting and decrypting data. == OpenPGP == OpenPGP is on the [[Internet Standard|Internet Standards Track]]; the current [[Specification (technical standard)|specification]] is [[Rfc:4880|RFC 4880]] (November 2007). OpenPGP is still under development and the successor to [[Rfc:2440|RFC 2440]], which is [[Rfc:4880|RFC 4880]], has been made a proposed standard. Many e-mail clients provide ''OpenPGP-compliant'' email security as described in [[Rfc:3156|RFC 3156]]. The [[Free Software Foundation]] has developed its own ''OpenPGP-compliant'' program called [[GNU Privacy Guard]] ([[Abbreviation|abbreviated]] GnuPG or GPG). GnuPG is freely available together with all [[source code]] under the [[GNU General Public License]] (GPL) and is maintained separately faraway from several Graphical User Interfaces ([[GUI]]s) that interact with the GnuPG library for [[encryption]], [[decryption]] and [[Digital signature|signing]] functions (see [[KGPG]], [[Seahorse (software)|Seahorse]], [[MacGPG]]). Several other vendors have also developed ''OpenPGP-compliant'' [[software]]. ==Related pages== * [[FreeOTFE]] - Disk encryption * [[PuTTY]] - SSH encryption == Further reading == * {{cite book| last =Garfinkel| first =Simson| authorlink =Simson Garfinkel| title =PGP: Pretty Good Privacy| publisher =[[O'Reilly & Associates]]| date =1991-12-01| isbn =1-56592-098-8}} * {{cite web | last = Zimmerman | first = Phil | title = Why I Wrote PGP | url=http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html | date=June 1991 | edition=199