Email encryption for noobs

As everybody knows, emails are being read and stored. I don't like that so much and installed Enigmail, which enables PGP-encryption for emails in Thunderbird. It took me two days to install and understand the details.

Now that it is working I get aware, that I will never really use it, because my family, friends and clients aren't really interested in generating public and private keys. So I won't be able to send any encrypted messages, nor will receive them.

I'm searching for a simple way to encrypt emails in Ubuntu, without having to bother other people with "strange" petitions about software they would have to install to read my emails.

Solution 1:

If It shall be possible with encrypted messages, must sender and the receiver be able to read encrypted messages.

sudo apt-get install gpgv2

A suggestion with GPG

Instead of typing text directly into a message, you can write text to a file that you can then use GPG for encryption.

(For use of my suggestion, there is no need of GPG keys.)

An example of that approach:

1. Create a file on your desktop called message_enc.txt.
2. Open the terminal.
3. Type gpg --symmetric message_enc.txt
4. Choose password. The one who wants to decrypt the message_enc.txt file later should enter the same password to decrypt it.

Result: The file that is now encrypted have about the same name as before, the only difference that there is a new extension at the end of the filename (usually .gpg).

To send the encrypted file in Thunderbird:

1. Open Thunderbird.
2. Send a message to someone, instead of writing something in the message you should attach the encrypted file.

To decrypt the message:

1. Open the terminal.
2. Type gpg --decrypt message_enc.txt.gpg > message.txt

Update 2016-12-21: It's possible to use the Thunderbird add-on Enigmail to encrypt and read encrypted e-mails.