Quote from: Nigerian Prince on August 04, 2012, 03:34 pmQuote from: Hungry ghost on August 04, 2012, 03:25 pmSo if you select three recipients does it create 3 messages, or one message that can be decrypted by all three?The latter.Yes.What actually happens is GPG encrypts the message with a symmetric cipher (these days that's usually AES256, but GPG selects the algorithm based on the preferences of each key. The symmetrically encrypted message is secured with a single use passphrase called a session key. The session key is then encrypted seperately to each of the public keys of the recipients using the relevant asymmetric algorithm for each key (RSA or Elgamal).If there are three recipients then the message will actually have four parts: the symmetrically encrypted data, the session key asymmetrically encrypted to the first recipient, the session key asymmetrically encrypted to the second recipient and the session key asymmetrically encrypted to the third recipient.