[geeklog-users] Re: PGP Key

[geeklog-users-admin at lists.geeklog.net]

I've cc'd the geeklog-users mailing list at 
http://lists.geeklog.net/listinfo/geeklog-users so others may benefit

First PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy which is a program that gives 
applications a way to securely transmit data.  The most popular example 
of this is in email.  PGP has a checked, closed source past that 
involved the US government, lawsuits and all sorts of nastiness.  Since 
then, there is now an open source alternative called GPG which stands 
for GNU Privacy Gaurd.  It is the same program as PGP minus any 
proprietary algorithms.

Now why does Geeklog include a field for PGP?  Well, the original 
author, Jason Whittenburg worked for a security company.  With security 
being their bread-and-butter he baked in this user attribute into 
Geeklog.  The idea is that two Geeklog users could transmit encrypted 
email between one another.  However, in order to decrypt the data you 
need a valid public key.  That being said, if you want to learn more 
about GPG, feel free to spend some time on Google learning about it.

Please note that currently GL does not use GPG internally for any reason.

--Tony

rjrufo wrote:
> I'm a newby, not only to GL, but to Unix, PHP and MySQL, and I have some questions regarding the PGP Key in the profile section of Geeklog.
> First, what does PGP stand for, and what is a PGP Key? Second, what is it used for, and how do I use it?
> I'm getting around quite nicely in GL, and have my site functioning pretty well, although there seems to be some bugs that I've found. Most of the bugs are probably due to the instalation, there are some functions that try to call a directory that either doesn't exist, or doesn't reside in the location that I put it. I'm getting those taken care of though.
> Any help you can give about the PGP Key would be greatly appreciated.