Pretty Good Privacy

ALSO CALLED: PGP
DEFINITION: Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a popular program used to encrypt and decrypt e-mail over the Internet. It can also be used to send an encrypted digital signature that lets the receiver verify the sender's identity and know that the message was not changed en route. Available both as freeware and in a low-cost commercial version, PGP is the most widely used privacy-ensuring program by individuals and  … 
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PRETTY GOOD PRIVACY DEFINITION (continued): …  is also used by many corporations. Developed by Philip R. Zimmermann in 1991, PGP has become a de facto standard for e-mail security. PGP can also be used to encrypt files being stored so that they are unreadable by other users or intruders.How It WorksPGP uses a variation of the public key system. In this system, each user has a publicly known encryption key and a private key known only to that user. You encrypt a message you send to someone else using their public key. When they receive it, they decrypt it using their private key. Since encrypting an entire message can be time-consuming, … 
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