A Couple of Questions...

[David Shaw]

On Oct 23, 2009, at 6:38 PM, sari Al-alem wrote:

> Hi....
>
> I dont know if this is the right place but im new to this encryption  
> software and i would like to ask some questions:
> 1- does GPG have to be installed on all users who will recieve my  
> mail?
> 2- does it have to be installed on the mail server?

It depends.  In common use #1 is "yes", and #2 is "no".  However,  
there are some setups where you would install it on the mail server so  
the server can decrypt your mail / verify signatures and then provide  
the mail, unencrypted, to you.  This is useful for dealing with mail  
programs that can't or don't handle OpenPGP encrypted mail (for  
example, most cell phones).  This does change the security situation  
to some extent, of course, since your mail server will contain an  
unencrypted copy of the mail.

A good way to look at this is the thing that does the decrypting/ 
verifying needs GPG.  If that thing is your local machinse, then your  
local machines need GPG.  If that thing is the mail server, then your  
mail server needs GPG.

David