Dear all,I'm writing this post as a guide primarily for the benefit of my customers who want to use PGP (GPG amounts to the same thing for our purposes) which is the reason I have locked this topic.Anyone else who has some useful info or wants to correct anything I've said should feel free to send me a message and I will amend.If you need an introduction to what GPG is and how it works I can recommend these websites:http://support.gpgtools.org/kb/how-to/introduction-to-cryptographyGPG employs what is known as Public Key Cryptography. In this method, each individual must generate her/his own personal key pair. The first key is known as the private key. It is protected by a password or passphrase, guarded and never shared with anyone.The second key is known as the public key. This key can be shared with any of your correspondents - and your correspondents can share theirs with you. Once you have a correspondents public key you can begin sending encrypted emails to this person. Only she will be able to decrypt and read your emails, because she is the only person who has access to the matching private key.Similarly, if you send a copy of your own public key to your email contacts and keep the matching private key secret, only you will be able to read encrypted messages from those contacts.By now you will realise that in order for us to send encrypted messages each person must have their own public and private key.The best software I can recommend for beginners is GPG4USB (http://gpg4usb.cpunk.de/). As the name suggests it can be run from a USB stick and most importantly it is very easy to use. It runs on both Linux and Windows and is open source i.e the code to build it can be freely downloaded from the website.The screenshots and documentation of the website will show you how to generate your own "key pair" i.e public and private key the first time you run the program. Your public key is the one you send to everyone so they can send you encrypted messages. Your private key needs to be kept safe and not given to anyone. Full instructions can be viewed at : http://gpg4usb.cpunk.de/docu_keygen.htmlWe have a thread here in the SR forums where you can post your public key if you want to make it easy for people to contact you via GPG. To export your public key, follow the instructions here:http://gpg4usb.cpunk.de/docu_export_key.htmlNext, you can post your public key in reply to this topic on the forums:http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=174Once you've done that you may want to try to send an encrypted message. For instance, you can view my public key on seller page on SR (http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/user/fd0c880f14) just highlight where it says --BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-- and select all the text down to where it says --END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-- , next press Ctrl+C to copy the text and in GPG4USB just click 'Import Key' > Clipboard in GPG4USB. You can now send me encrypted messages! (For step by step instructions on importing keys see http://gpg4usb.cpunk.de/docu_import_key.html)If you want to actually send an encrypted message follow the instructions on http://gpg4usb.cpunk.de/docu_encrypt.html A nice touch is to add your own public key to the first message you send me so that I can also send you an encrypted message. Just move your mouse over your own public key on the right (it will have a small picture of a pair of keys beside it), right click and select "Append selected keys to text" - now when GPG4USB encrypts the message to me it will also include your own key so whoever you're messaging can respond using an encrypted message.There are some guidelines here on the forum as to how messages encrypted with GPG should be laid out, feel free to have a peek here:http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=1048Decrypting text is likewise very easy. Just follow the instructions here:http://gpg4usb.cpunk.de/docu_decrypt.htmlN.B Please rememebr that the original, unencrypted versions of your text/files may still reside on your computer, so both your correspondent and yourself must remember to remove them from computers when necessary. For this reason I would recommend installing GPG4USB to an encrypted USB stick. Please let me know if you need help with this.V.