he last in my mini series on privacy; an introduction to Pretty Good Privacy (PGP),a military grade encryption that is used to scramble (encrypt) and unscramble (decrypt) e-mail and / or data so that it can only be read by those intended to read it. You encrypt your e-mail message and send it to others who can decrypt it. You can encrypt and decrypt files on your computer that you don't want others to read. At present this PGP encryption can only be used by those in the USA and Canada. To find out more about the politics of PGP go to http://www.crypto.org.

PGP works by using two keys: a public key that you create and give to others to use and a private (secret key) which only you have access to and is used to decrypt any message sent to you that has been encrypted by someone else who has used your public key to scramble (encrypt) their message to you. Thus, no one but yourself can unscramble the message sent to you and encrypted by use of your public key.

The PGP program is designed so that you cannot accidentally give out your secret key.PGP automatically brings your secret key when it is needed to decrypt a message to you. All you need to do is generate a "key pair"; one public, one private and give your public key to all your contacts. If your contacts are using PGP you will need to collect their public keys. The PGP program, once installed will allow you to add public keys to various messages as required.

You can download the latest PGP program, which is freeware, at www.pgpi.org.

Further help can be obtained at http://www.theinternet.cc/pgp4dummies/. Once the PGP files are downloaded it will be necessary to install the latest versions of Eudora 5.1 or Outlook Express 5.50 or greater. Once these versions are installed then you can install PGP. Both programs will incorporate PGP as a "plug in" option. More detailed instructions can be found at http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.page.html or http://www.theinternet.cc/pgp4dummies/.