High quality security is a good thing. Many years ago (early 90s) Phil Zimmermann released this thing called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) that used public & private keys to enable people to sign & encrypt data. Its a really good core design and very high security. When it came out I wrote an early Windows GUI to try and make it easier for most users and exchanged a couple of emails with Mr. Zimmermann. But unfortunately PGP never caught on because it was complicated to use and requires building a network of trusted keys (so that you know who a key really belongs to).
I just recently found out about Keybase.io which is a system that provides secure chat & file sharing and uses PGP at its core. It also acts as a system for distributing keys and providing the identity of those keys. I’ve only played around on it for a little bit but it seems like this might finally be a good, viable way to enable widespread use of PGP!
Leave a Comment