GPG uses a combination of symmetric key and public key cryptography. It’s a highly secure method of encrypting and sharing encrypted messages. The other party just needs your public key, the message itself encrypted with your private key.

The above video is using a program called Kleopatra, it makes GPG really easy to use. You can find it here:

manjaro / arch

pacman -S kleopatra

debian / ubuntu

apt install kleopatra

windows

firefox "https://gpg4win.org/"

To use GPG with your webmail you’ll need to use something like Mailvelope. If you’re using thunderbird you can use Enigmail.

I bet you’re excited to use it now however it’s my experience getting other not so technical people to use it is a little on the hard side. That’s okay, it comes in handy for things like encrypting private files and signing your commits on git.

However don’t despair there is something that everyone can use and that’s protonmail. It uses gpg in the background, hiding all the technical hurdles to the non-initiated. You can of course export your keys from protonmail and use it in other applications.