Secure Communication Encrypted Email In the age of broad monitoring I prefer cyphered ways of communication. Regarding email, there are two concepts available: on one hand s/mine, on the other the a little bit less widespread but essentially safer PGP. So I usually sign my out going emails, in hope to get the replies encrypted using the provided public key. s/mime s/mime is a well accepted and practically continuously available procedure, based on public certificates (PKI, public key infrastructure). Such certificates usually aren't free, but with Thawte and SwissSign there are at least one renowned international as well as a local swiss Root Certificate Authority that issue certificates free of charge (Web.de also offers certificates for their free mail service). Thawte even goes a step forward and additionally validates the identity of the certificate owner with its Web of Trust. In the meantime I have been checked by enough different notaries and therefore become a Thawte WOT Notary myself (in the city of Lucerne and all around Zurich ETH) I have public keys from both Thawte and SwissSign. As world-wide second largest, first one is appropriately recognized and the root certificates are provided with most of the operating systems out of the box - the second one offers stronger keys and is not depending on the united states and therefore tendential better protected against an infiltration of unfair organizations like the NSA. The SwissSign Root Certificate may be installed on demand. The SHA1 fingerprints of my s/mime certificates: Thawte 1: d6 71 64 97 8c d6 73 56 97 4c 0f 05 2e 0e 59 eb 7d 81 a6 6e Thawte 2: 2f 21 7e 65 ad d4 86 03 d2 d8 45 ac 0b 83 73 3b dc 93 39 11 PGP and GnuPG Alternatively to s/mime I also work with PGP ("Pretty Good Privacy"). GnuPG is freely available and opensource, and (beside of the commercial PGP) there's also a freeware PGP version. Both can be found at PGPi. My public key: download public key (DH/DSS 3072 Bits asc) Fingerprint: F66C 7E6A 8D30 5EF3 34FD 4E89 742C 542B 6A73 00EF

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