I got around to setting up PGP on my iMac today. Email doesn’t have very much built-in security, so without a system like PGP there’s no way to know that the message you’re getting from someone is actually from who it’s supposed to be from and says what it’s supposed to say. Here’s how to set it up to work with Mail:
- Download the latest version of GNU Privacy Guard for your version of MacOS.
- Mount the GnuPG Mac OS X disk image and run the .mpkg installer.
- Download the latest version of GPGKeys.
- Decompress the .tar.gz and drag the GPGKeys file to your Applications folder.
- Run GPGKeys. From the “Key” menu, select “Generate…” A Terminal window will open. You can select the default options for each choice unless you know what you’re doing. When prompted, enter your real name, email address, and comment (handle). Once the key is generated you can quit Terminal.
- Download the Sen:te PGP plug-in for Mail.
- Run the “Install GPGMail” script.
- Open Mail. Everything should be working now. When composing a new message you’ll see a new checkbox that lets you choose your key and sign your message. When receiving a signed message you’ll be able to verify it.
Of course, this will only work for me when I’m using my home computer and not my Gmail account, but at least I have it set up now.