We'll begin with GNU Privacy Guard (GPG). This is a free open source implementation of Phil Zimmermann's Pretty Good Privacy, which he created back in 1991. You can use either one of them to either encrypt or cryptographically sign files or messages. In this section, we'll focus strictly on GPG.
There are some advantages of using GPG:
- It uses strong, hard-to-crack encryption algorithms.
- It uses the private/public key scheme, which eliminates the need to transfer a password to a message or file recipient in a secure manner. Instead, just send along your public key, which is useless to anyone other than the intended recipient.
- You can use GPG to just encrypt your own files for your own use, the same as you'd use any other encryption utility.
- It can be used to encrypt email messages, allowing you to have true end-to-end encryption for sensitive emails.
- There are a few GUI-type frontends available to make it somewhat easier to use.
But, as you might know, there are also some disadvantages...