PGP & GPG

124 Chapter 8

Unprotected Email Components

OpenPGP goes through any number of hoops to protect the

contents of the message, but you should remember what it

doesn’t protect. In particular, OpenPGP does not encrypt the

subject lines in email. A subject such as “Ransom pickup at

8PM, City Park” doesn’t leave many questions for anyone who

intercepts your email. Email messages sent with PGP should

have innocuous subjects (or perhaps no subject at all).

Also, your mail client might default to storing unencrypted

versions of the OpenPGP emails that you send. Be sure that

you know how your OpenPGP system stores messages. My pre-

ferred OpenPGP mail client (mutt) stores the sent messages

in encrypted format, which means that I cannot read messages

that ...