Why use encryption for emails if you have to share the public key?

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Why would you use something like PGP if you have to send your encryption key unencrypted to the party you are sending to? And if you leave this key out on something like Twitter for example, couldn’t law enforcement or a third party if they gained access to the other persons email still read the contents of the encrypted email by using this key? Doesn’t this defeate the purpose of using encryption?

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33 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

First of all, those keys always come in pairs.

Normally you’d already have the *public key* of the recipient and encrypt your message with that. This key is not secret. The recipient can then use their secret matching *private key* to decrypt your message. For them to answer, they’d need your public key from anywhere, your website for example.

You can also encrypt your message with your private key, which means everybody can decrypt it with your public key. Now they know for sure the message was encrypted by you.

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