E-Mail: Pretty Good Privacy

Users who rely on electronic mail for business or personal

communications should beware. Messages sent over a net-

work are subject to eavesdropping. If the messages are

stored in a file, they are subject to perusal months or even

years later. There is also the threat of impersonation and

that a message may not be from the party it claims to be

from. Protection is available in the form of Pretty Good

Privacy (PGP), an e-mail security package developed by

Phil Zimmermann that combines confidentiality and digi-

tal signature capabilities to provide a powerful, virtually

unbreakable, and easy-to-use package.