What is PGP?

PGP refers for Pretty good Privacy. PGP is a  popular public key encoded program that is used in the world  to  protect the privacy of email, data files, drives and instant messaging. When the user and receiver don't want any sort of interference in their instant messaging, they prefers  PGP program that prevent  the third party to hack it or to read it. It's first version was developed by  Philip Zimmermann and first offered to the public in 1991. 

The use of internet is increasing day by day in the entire world, thus being the cause of  heavy traffic on the Internet. Many data packets can be captured in the way and can be stored for years. Mail servers can also store messages that can be read currently or in the future time, many times when it  becomes irrelevant and meaningless. Email has not  get yet any legal protection like personnel phone calls and letters as it can be read or can be edited or hacked in the way.  

PGP converts plain text into encoded form and the sender sends it to the receiver, only receiver can decode it and again it converts in the plain text. None can decode it in the way neither can read or edit because all the  messages are in unreadable form. So PGP provides privacy that is not available in the online communication. 

PGP  works in the smart and simple way as  it consists of two types of  key pair a public key and a private key. The public key encodes the  messages while the private key  decodes  them. 

The sender can  sends  his/her message using PGP to generate a key pair by entering a real name or nickname to be associated with the keys and a password. These two keys are interlocked to each other and appears like a small bits of a  text code. The sender copy and paste it into an email and send it to the receiver in the in the clear form. 

The receiver do the opposite act of  the  sender. He/She decode the message what the sender  sends it and can read it in the clear form. In reply He/She can also do the act of  encoding the message and sends it to his/her sender. Thus the communication goes on  without any  theft and interruption.  The third party can see only the encoded symbol not the text. The sender can use the digital signature tool in his/ her outgoing mail, so the receiver can recognize the original mail of  the sender.  

PGP is also  very  useful in protecting the stored data. The data can be downloaded and stored on the hard disk or in the CDs associated with public key for  encoding and private key for decoding. Some versions of PGP provides the facility to encrypt the whole disk. This is very useful for the laptops and palmtops. 

PGP is an open source software and some versions of PGP is also available with zero fee for the personnel use. On the other hand the commercial versions of PGP are also available for  multi-using environments within the network.