PGP Public Key

What is a PGP Public Key?

A PGP ("pretty good privacy") public key is a block of code given out freely to anyone that helps to identify an individual. Each public key has a paired private key that is protected like a personal password.

A message is either signed and/or encrypted using the private key of the sender. When a recipient receives a signed or encrypted message, they can use the public key to either verify the signature or decrypt the message to be read.

Anyone with any e-mail software/web application can read a signed message with nothing special. To verify the signature, they would need to configure something on their computer to do the heavy lifting. An encrypted message, however, can only be read by a person with the software installed that can decrypt the message using keys.

My public key for signing and/or encrypting is:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1

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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----