Not everyone has something to hide
I use PGP for the encryption and decryption of my email, I also use Geany as my text editor, it seemed sensible to combine the two.
What is PGP encryption?
PGP is short for Pretty Good Privacy, a security program that enables users to communicate securely by decrypting and encrypting messages, authenticating messages through digital signatures, and encrypting files.
PGP encryption is almost impossible to hack. That’s why it’s still used by entities that send and receive sensitive information, such as journalists and hacktivists.
What is Geany ?
Geany is a powerful, stable and lightweight programmer’s text editor that provides tons of useful features without bogging down your workflow. It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS is translated into over 40 languages, and has built-in support for more than 50 programming languages.
I like PGP and have had a key since 2000, (in 1997 PGP morphed into OpenPGP, moving away from a proprietary product to an open standard).
So it’s only natural that I combine Geany and PGP encryption via the GeanyPG plugin to encrypt / decrypt blocks of text on the fly.
So, what is GeanyPG?
GeanyPG is a plugin for Geany that allows the user to encrypt, decrypt and verify signatures with GnuPG.
Install Geany
To install Geany it’s the usual dance of update and install.
I’m on a Debian based distro so my terminal commands are:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install geany
Other installation methods are available, like the official repository if you need the latest version:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:geany-dev/ppasudo
apt-get update
sudo apt-get install geany
The GeanyPG plugin is part of the base version but if you fancy looking at all the other plugins there is a whole GitHub repo .
To add the plugin, open Geany and using the Menu go to ‘Tools | Plugin Manager’.
From there, tick the box to activate the GeanyPG plugin.
Activating the GeanyPG plugin
Encrypting using PGP and Geany
To start encrypting and decrypting, type something and using the menu select ‘Tools | Geany | Encrypt’.
Note: Either the contents of the whole Geany window or any highlighted text will be encrypted.
The popup window will prompt you to decide whose Public key you want to encrypt to.
Encrypting to a PGP Key
Then, hey presto, an encrypted PGP block, ready to be copy and pasted into an email.
If you receive a message that has been encrypted to your Public key, select ‘Tools | Geany | Decrypt’ and as long as you have the corresponding Private key it can be decrypted and read.
PGP is an older, secure form of encryption that has failed to be adopted widely for personal use, probably due to poor UI e.g. nobody wants to have to use a Terminal to examine their keyring.
More communications should be secure.
More email clients should incorporate it, and Thunderbird has it baked in.
Security is a hobbyhorse of mine and I’ll add more posts around this subject.