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?
In: Technology
It is some amazing math. You have two separate keys that work together. When you encrypt with the public key you can’t unencrypt with that same key It has to be done with the private key.
For the encryption a public key is like having a bunch of lock boxes that people can come by and pick up put their message in and send it to you but only you having the key can unlock it.
And the other direction you can sign a message with your private key so that when someone receives it they can use the public key you yourself have published to confirm that the message was sent from you and has not been altered.
for how all the math works, I’ll have to leave that to someone who understands it better than I do. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Public-key_cryptography
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