Today it is commonly understood that free online services are not really free. Service providers get to monetize the information they gather about their users. This way, for better or worse, they are able to customize their users’ online experience.
There are many reasons, however, for being able not to disclose all your content, all your information to these service providers.
Let’s say, for example, that you have a business idea and you want to share it with your business partner. Let’s say that you both use Gmail for your email needs. But this message is so important that you want to make sure nobody else can read it except for your business partner.
Gmail doesn’t offer a simple encryption method. But there’s Mailvelope — a nifty browser add-on that does.
Incidentally, it can be used not only with Gmail, but also with many other free email providers, such as Yahoo, Outlook, or GMX.
Setting It Up
Setting up Mailvelope is super easy.
Install it as an add-on into Mozilla Firefox or as an extension into Google Chrome. The installation doesn’t even require a browser restart.
How Does It Work
Mailvelope utilizes public-key encryption. It is an asymmetric way of message encryption. This simply means that the sender and the receiver don’t share the same secret key to encrypt and decrypt the message.
Each user generates his or her own key-pair consisting of two parts — a public key which is shared with all message receivers and a private key which is never shared.
Public keys are used to encrypt outgoing messages. The private key is used to decrypt incoming messages. It is a very elegant and efficient method of sending messages safely.
The beauty of the method is that it is very easy to create a key-pair but it is mathematically impossible to re-create the private part of the key-pair from its publicly available part.
Creating a Key-Pair
To generate your key-pair, click on the
Select

Mailvelope — Icon Options
Now you arrive at Mailvelope’s Options page within your browser.
Click on the
Fill out your name and your email address in the right pane. Your email address must be the one you will be actually using to send out encrypted messages.

Mailvelope — Key Generator
Then enter and re-enter a strong password.
If you don’t know how to create a strong password, read my previous post regarding this topic.
Remember to store this password safely. You will need it in the future.
Finally click on the
After a few seconds, Mailvelope will have successfully generated your key-pair and added it to your key ring.

Mailvelope — Primary Key
Now click on the
In the right pane, select your
And tick the box next to
This setting is important because it makes sure that your key will be added to all outgoing emails, so that you will be able to decrypt your sent emails, too.
Exporting and Importing Public Keys
To make proper use of asymmetric encryption, senders and recipients need to exchange their public keys.
Exporting
You need to send your public key to your recipients, and they need to send their public keys to you. You use the public key of your recipient(s) to encrypt your outgoing messages. Obviously, you also need to add your own public key to these messages, otherwise you won’t be able to decrypt the messages you send out.
To be able to share your public key, you need to export it from your key ring. Click on the

Mailvelope — Export Public Key
In the right pane of the window, select your name and then click
In the Export Key pop-up window click on the
Share this file with your email recipients. They will have to import your public key into their key rings.
Importing
To import your recipients’ public keys into your key ring, click on the

Mailvelope — Import Keys
In the right pane, add the public key file by clicking on the
After successfully importing the public keys, they are added to your key ring and you are ready to send encrypted messages to these recipients.
Encrypting Messages

Mailvelope in Gmail
To do so, compose a message.
When done, click on the icon hovering in the message body window.
In the pop-up click on the

Mailvelope — Encrypt Message
Then add all the people you want to be able to decrypt your message by selecting them from the list of available keys and clicking on the green
Again, don’t forget to add your own email address.
When you are done, click
Important Note
Decrypting Messages
Let’s say that you receive an encrypted message. The sender of the message already encrypted it using your public key. To decrypt the message, all you need is your own private key — the secret part of your key-pair that you have never shared with anyone.

Mailvelope — Decrypt Message
To decrypt a message, click on it. It won’t be readable at first but then an envelope icon with a smaller yellow lock icon in front of it will appear.
By clicking on the envelope you bring up the Key unlock pop-up window.
In this window, you have to enter the
Then click
Now you can read your decrypted message.
Final Thoughts
I hope that this post will encourage you to use email encryption as much as possible. With Mailvelope, setting up your key-pair and starting to send out encrypted messages takes only a few minutes. And you can use it with any free email service provider.
But the greatest benefit is that your online life, as far as your email communication is concerned, will cease to be a product ready to be monetized by someone else.
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