Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics.
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Your email likely is already delivered over a TLS or SMARTLS protected channel. That's not the (only) problem PGP addresses. PGP provides message authentication in addition to encryption.
To take your colleague as an example, his email was cryptographically signed by him. A function that requires his private key, and possibly a passphrase to unlock the key. The signature includes a hash of the message, and requires that private key to generate. On your end, your client hashes the message again and compares the signature. If it isn't identical, someone has tampered with the content. Presuming you met up ahead of time in person or through another trusted channel, and shared public keys, seeing the valid signature also gives you confidence that this email was actually written by the person you expect, and not anyone else with access to their device or account. (If the senders key is still safe anyway.)