Email continues to be one of the most popular and useful functions of a Linux system. Being able to keep in touch with your friends, family, and colleagues is essential for any platform. As the scope of email threats keeps increasing, systems for email security and encryption have become more complex and more of a necessity. Protecting email from unauthorized access and inspection is important particularly because the protocols that govern email do not include encryption. Email was not designed with any privacy or security in mind. The consequence of the lack of security is that email can be compromised on the sender’s device, on a network, on a server, and on the recipient’s device.
Sending encrypted messages is one method of ensuring electronic privacy. By encrypting messages, this will help to keep your precious information safe by making messages look like garbled text to uninvited onlookers. Encrypting email may sound a little daunting, but it’s actually simple with the right software.
OpenPGP is the most widely used email encryption standard. Whether you are using an email client or a web-based email solution, you can encrypt your email with OpenPGP.
There are very few email applications that have PGP encryption enabled by default. Fortunately, there are some good open source encryption applications available for Linux that are simple to use. We make the following recommendations captured in a legendary LinuxLinks chart.
Click the links in the table below to learn more about each tool.
| Email Encryption Tools | |
|---|---|
| GnuPG | Encrypt and sign data and communication |
| OpenPGP | Authenticating or encrypting data, using public key cryptography |
| Mailvelope | Extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox |
| Enigmail | OpenPGP Email Security for Mozilla Applications |
| Mymail-Crypt for Gmail | Simple solution to mail encryption; not affiliated with Google |
This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |