Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
Introduction
PGP (short for Pretty Good Privacy) is a highly secure public key encryption program originally written by Philip Zimmermann. Over the past few years, PGP has got thousands of adherent supporters all over the globe
and has become a de-facto standard for encryption of email on the Internet.
If you don't know whether PGP is something for you, please take some time
to read Phil Zimmermann's article on
why you should use PGP. You
may also be interested in this excellent introduction to PGP, taken from a PGP workshop by Electronic Frontiers Houston. Adam Back has written this history of PGP.
Platforms
PGP is available for many different platforms, including
Unix,
VMS, MS-DOS, OS/2,
Macintosh,
Amiga, Atari
and Archimedes. There is no native
Windows version of PGP yet,
although a number of shells have been developed that wrap nicely around the
DOS version.
Latest versions
The latest freeware versions of PGP are 2.6.3 (USA only) and 2.6.3i (international version), which you can download here. However, there are many other versions of PGP,
including a commercial variant from ViaCrypt.
Documentation
The PGP documentation by Philip Zimmermann has been made available in hypertext format by Arne Helme.
Jeff Licquia maintains a FAQ on PGP from the alt.security.pgp newsgroup, and Michael Johnson edits the Where to Get PGP FAQ. A number of PGP books are also available.
Language support
PGP and the PGP User's Guide have been translated into many different languages. There are also a number of non-English PGP resources available on the Web.
Legal stuff
Contrary to what many people seem to think, PGP is perfectly legal to use, provided that you choose the right version and take
the necessary precautions when obtaining the program.
PGP resources on the Web
Francis Litterio maintains the WWW Virtual Library pages on PGP.
If you live outside the USA, please feel free to check in at the International PGP Home Page.
Here are some of my own favourite PGP links.
Last updated
March 5, 1997
by Stσle Schumacher
<stale@hypnotech.com>