MaximumPC 2005 06

How To

STEP 3: ADD A PINCH OF DATA AND A DASH OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Regular e-mail is perfectly fi ne for casual communications,
but what if you need to send a private e-mail regarding an
important matter? The solution is a tool called PGP
( http://www.pgp.com ), which is an acronym
for “Pretty Good Privacy.” PGP utilizes
shared-key encryption, which means
it uses two kinds of keys: public and
private. You fi rst generate public and
private keys for yourself; and then you
and your contacts add each others’
public keys to your respective “key
rings.” Using these public and private
keys, PGP encrypts and decrypts e-mails
sent between you and the people on
your key ring, thus ensuring that the
sender and recipient are who they claim
to be.
PGP has been around for many
years and is the most popular method of
e-mail encryption in use today. It exists
in several fl avors, including a freeware
version for noncommercial use. To get

started, download and install the latest release, minus all the

optional plug-ins and features (none of which are free). When

the installer asks if you already have keys you’d like to use,

select “No, I’m a

New User.”

Sending E-mails Securely and Confidentially

JUNE 2005 MA XIMUMPC 59

Shell out $60 for PGP

Personal Desktop and

you’ll get PGPdisk

(for encrypting files

on your hard drive),

as well as convenient

plug-ins for ICQ and

several popular e-mail

clients. If you want to

use the freeware ver-

sion of PGP instead,

uncheck all these

optional components

during installation.

STEP 1: WHAT IS PRETTY GOOD PRIVACY?

You’ll need to mount your encrypted image
fi le before you can access and modify the data
inside it. Private Disk does this automatically
when you fi rst create the image, but the next
time you need to access your data, you’ll need
to start Private Disk , click the Connect button,
and locate the image fi le you wish to mount—or
just double-click the image fi le. Enter your
password, and your encrypted data will appear
as a virtual drive in Windows Explorer, where
it can be read from and written to just like any
other drive. Any data you add to this virtual
drive is automatically encrypted. When you’re
done accessing your encrypted data (and before
you unplug your pocket drive), dismount the
virtual drive either by exiting Private Disk or by
clicking the Disconnect button in the program’s
main window.
Toting fi les around on a pocket drive isn’t
very convenient if you can’t access them on
computers that don’t have Private Disk installed. However,
it’s easy to take Private Disk with you. First, copy the
entire Private Disk folder from your hard drive onto your
pocket drive (the default folder is C:\Program Files\Dekart\
Private Disk). Next, open the Start menu, choose Run, type
“%SystemRoot%\system32” and click OK. Locate versnum.
dll and dkar.dll and copy these two fi les to the Private Disk
folder on your pocket drive. Finally, edit prvdisk.ini (found in
the Private Disk folder) and add the following line at the end:
SerialNumber =xxxxx (where xxxxx is the serial number you

obtained upon purchasing Private Disk ).

Your encrypted pocket drive is now entirely self-suffi cient. To

access your fi les on someone else’s computer, simply run the

PrvDisk.exe executable from your pocket drive and mount your

encrypted image fi le.

Once you mount an encrypted .dpd file using Private Disk , its

contents will appear as a virtual disk drive in Windows Explorer,

where it can be read from and written to.

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Once you mount an encrypted .dpd file using

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Once you mount an encrypted .dpd file using Private Disk

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Your encrypted pocket drive is now entirely self-suffi cient. To

3

Your encrypted pocket drive is now entirely self-suffi cient. To

access your fi les on someone else’s computer, simply run the

3

access your fi les on someone else’s computer, simply run the

3

PrvDisk.exe executable from your pocket drive and mount your

3

PrvDisk.exe executable from your pocket drive and mount your

contents will appear as a virtual disk drive in Windows Explorer,

3

contents will appear as a virtual disk drive in Windows Explorer,

where it can be read from and written to.

3

where it can be read from and written to.