Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2015 November 22

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 22

Help with PGP

I am so confused. Okay, so I am trying to learn how to set up and use PGP. I downloaded the GPG Suite. I was attempting to follow the instructions here but I'm lost. I am on a Mac, running Snow Leopard (10.6.8). I successfully installed the program. I then set up a new email account as I want to have an anonymous one to use for encypted messages. I set up one at ghostmail.com. I then followed the instructions and used that email address as the one the instructions show on the first screenshot at the PGP program help page. I entered the email address I set up, hit generate key and it worked as shown.

I then went to the next step of "Your first encrypted mail". There's where I got completely lost. First they tell you "All you need for this first test is a sec/pub key in GPG Keychain matching the mail address used in Mail.app." I have no idea what mail.app is. After fumbling about for about a half hour, I got the idea that it may be the mail program through my Mac -- since when you search finder for "mail.app" it comes up. I've never used that once in my life (I use all web based mail directly), but I am guessing that there's some way to set an online mail server to go through that program? Anyway, I fumbled about some more attempting this. I went through the steps to set up that mail program to feed to the email I set up. On the first screen it says:

Full Name:
Email Address:
Password:

Respectively, I put in something random for my name (since I'm trying to set up something anonymous), put in the ghostmail email address, and for the password, I used the password I set up for that ghostmail account. When I clicked continue, the next screen then says "account type" and "POP" is filled in, but I could choose, in a dropdown, IMAP, Exchange 2007 or Exchange IMAP. I left POP in. It asks me to fill in "incoming mail server" so I put in the ghostmail address again (the user name and password fields below those were still populated with the ghostmail name and password I had entered). I then click continue and it says every time "The POP server "NAME@ghostmail.com" is not responding. Try checking the network connection..."

I have no idea if this is even what was meant when the help page told me to go to "mail.app", and if I'm even close to on the right track, I need handholding.--108.46.96.158 (talk) 04:02, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

It's too late now, but Wikipedia has an article on Mail.app (or a redirect, anyway).

GhostMail's help page says they don't support external email clients. If you plan to use this email account only to send and receive GPG messages, you can sign up with an ordinary email provider (that supports IMAP), since the client-side GPG encryption will protect your emails even if the provider has lousy security practices (if you do it right). An email provider that supports POP/IMAP/SMTP will tell you the appropriate server names (often imap.provider.com and smtp.provider.com). You should probably pick IMAP over POP. Basically you are on the right track but you were doomed to failure because GhostMail doesn't support Mail.app. -- BenRG (talk) 06:23, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Good answer! To clarify one bit: When you are asked for the "incoming server", the system expects a server address (either an IP address or, more typically nowadays, a hostname), not an email address. A hostname has no "@" and in this case, typically 3 dot-separated parts, as in Ben's examples. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Backing up a bit, there are two completely different ways of using email these days:

1. Traditionally, you used an email client, dedicated to the task of sending and reading email. The client talked to a mail server using a protocol also dedicated to the task; the two best-known ones are POP and IMAP. (Even more popular, though no one ever thinks about it and I don't know what it's called, is whatever protocol Microsoft Outlook uses to talk to Microsoft's Exchange and other servers.)
2. These days, many people use web mail. You use an ordinary web browser, talking to a webserver somewhere using ordinary http or https. The webserver does whatever it takes to render pages showing your mail, and letting you compose your mail, in HTML (with, these days, heavy dollops of CSS, JavaScript, and other modern web technologies).

Now, it sounds like you'd like to use #2. But it sounds like GPG is all set up for #1. When it asked you to set up mail.app (and when you tried to), you were setting up an email client. It wanted you to enter the address of the mail server (one that speaks POP or IMAP), but there's not actually one of those in your picture. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC)