# Uses for OpenPGP/GPG?

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by TylerK (This site is so "educational") on Tuesday, 04-May-2010 18:21:37

Hey all,
I've heard of OpenPGP and GPG, and have the ability to use them here; however, I don't really know what they're used for. I know they can be used to sign messages to indicate that they're really from the person who sent them, but since hardly anyone I know actually uses them, what good do they do in the grand scheme of things?
Tyler

## Post 2 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 04-May-2010 21:17:41

It's not the best example, but a friend sent me an attachment the other day. BEcause of the contents of it he wanted to make sure that it was only me that was reading it and that I couldn't pass it on to other people.
I sent him my public key which he used to encrypt the attachment and then send it to me. Because public and private keys are tied into each other, the only way to decrypt the attachmet is for me to enter a password which was created with my private key.
With the amount of packet sniffing thats going on, things like gpg are pretty handy.
For example, again, I could post my public key on my website. If someone wanted to send something private, they just use my public key which theres no risk in sharing and only I will be able to open it.

## Post 3 by TylerK (This site is so "educational") on Tuesday, 04-May-2010 22:52:12

OK, people, here's the link to my GPG public key. I have a private key as well, so if someone wants to send me an encrypted message, just for fun, they could simply encrypt the message with my public key and send it to my primary email address.
-Tyler