[Enigmail] Initial Setup

[Robert J. Hansen]

Jan's already given you a pretty good answer.  My only objection to it
is that it's too long.  :)  I'll be giving you the same answers in a
much shorter form.

Frank Swatland wrote:
> First Thank you

You're very welcome.  :)

> What I don't understand is how do I send my Public Code to another
> user?

When someone needs your public key, they'll just pull it down from the
keyserver network.

> Do they have to have a Thunderbird Application?

They need to have an email program that can handle OpenPGP.  There are
many out there.

> So if I send an encrypted email to fswat at yahoo.com how does that
> person get my Public Code and what does he or she have to have or
> what will he/she have to do to un-encrypt my email?

Imagine that you're given directions to someone's house.  The person
giving you the directions says, "now, this person lives in the middle of
nowhere, and it'll be dark when you arrive, so you probably won't be
able to find his house unless he's got his porch light on for you."

You might then ask, "How can I be sure he's ready for visitors?"

You might get reminded, "He'll have his porch light on for you.  That
means it's a pretty good guess he's ready for you to stop by."

In a similar vein, you must have your recipient's public key before you
can send them an encrypted email.  If your recipient has a public key,
the odds are very good your recipient already has GnuPG installed and
knows how to use it.  After all -- if they didn't, how could they have
generated their key?  :)