I'd prefer if people encrypted email before sending it to me, but most don't. So my email server encrypts it with my public key on the way in. This is obviously not as good, but it provides several benefits.
First of all, if you gain access to my email account, you can't read my email because you don't have my PGP key. So for example, even if you trigger a password reset email for any of my other online accounts, you wont be able to access the confirmation link/code contained within in order to take over those accounts too.
Secondly, the mail store on my server and all of my email clients, eg inside K-9 mail on my phone/tablet and Evolution on my laptop are all encrypted. So if you compromise/steal any of those devices, you don't automatically get direct access to all of my mail.
Thirdly, it means I use PGP every day, so I become more familiar with the way it works and how to use it over time. I tried using PGP in the past but ended up forgetting how to use it properly because people rarely sent encrypted mail to me.
How awesome would it be if we woke up tomorrow and Google had added a section to their GMail settings page where you could upload your public PGP key and it would automatically encrypt all of your incoming mail with it? Especially if they released an addon for Chrome which allowed you to safely use PGP within the GMail web interface.
First of all, if you gain access to my email account, you can't read my email because you don't have my PGP key. So for example, even if you trigger a password reset email for any of my other online accounts, you wont be able to access the confirmation link/code contained within in order to take over those accounts too.
Secondly, the mail store on my server and all of my email clients, eg inside K-9 mail on my phone/tablet and Evolution on my laptop are all encrypted. So if you compromise/steal any of those devices, you don't automatically get direct access to all of my mail.
Thirdly, it means I use PGP every day, so I become more familiar with the way it works and how to use it over time. I tried using PGP in the past but ended up forgetting how to use it properly because people rarely sent encrypted mail to me.
How awesome would it be if we woke up tomorrow and Google had added a section to their GMail settings page where you could upload your public PGP key and it would automatically encrypt all of your incoming mail with it? Especially if they released an addon for Chrome which allowed you to safely use PGP within the GMail web interface.
You can read about how I do the automated encryption of incoming mail here: https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...