McAfee PGP Personal Security

PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, was 10 years old this summer and what better birthday present than the European Parliament's declaration that Echelon, an international intelligence eavesdropping network, has the ability to scan and monitor our every email? But here we have a means of defence.

PGP will protect your information by encrypting it. Complex mathematical formulae are used to scramble the digital information that makes up your emails and files. If an encrypted email is snooped before it arrives at the rightful recipient, the snoop won't be able to make head nor tail of what they see. Only those authorised to do so can.

The secret lies in the concept of 'keys'. The program creates two keys - a 'public' key and a 'private' one. You give the public key to all and sundry for encrypting emails to send to you, but it can't be used to decrypt them. Only your top-secret private key can be used for decryption: anybody intercepting encrypted email sees gobbledegook.

It's a near-foolproof system, the one real caveat being that you must never reveal your private key. The challenge, however, lies in the execution.

Can encryption be made easy, compelling and cheap enough to muster widespread appeal?

McAfee has loaded this mini-suite with add-on features, including a firewall, encrypted ICQ instant messaging and secure file shredding. You can also encrypt files on your own hard disk and make self-decrypting files that anyone can open so long as they know your password.

This is all very gratifying, but only if you first understand what's going on behind the scenes. And that's the first fatal flaw. If encryption was a transparent feature of popular email programs like Outlook Express, email scrambling would be second nature.

But despite some handy plug-ins that encrypt email attachments automatically, the learning curve here is steep - not helped by the plethora of settings to contend with. You have to really care about protecting your privacy to get to grips with all that's on offer.

Contact
McAfee: 0800 0927160 www.mcafee-at-home.com ALSO CONSIDER

McAfee Office 2001
A very comprehensive package
£70 - Worth it
Review: Computeractive, issue 74

See also:

Steganos Security Suite 4

Protect your precious information with powerful encryption software.  21 Jun 2002

PGP not for sale

Network Associates backtracks on plans to sell off encryption products  08 Mar 2002

McAfee controls rival's products

Users can install and monitor rival antivirus programs  30 Oct 2001

Comment: Britain - the internet's Big Brother

The current rush for anti-terrorist legislation is misguided  23 Oct 2001

Encryption technology is not an enemy of the state

What is it about encryption that governments have such a hard time with?  12 Oct 2001

Godfather of encryption hits back

PGP creator defends software following hate mail attacks  26 Sep 2001

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