Re: PGP encrypted email - basic questions

[Eric White <ewhite () ssc wisc edu>]

Dave,

I believe you're looking at messages that are digitally signed, but not 
encrypted.  It's explained more here:

http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-message-signatures.html

Dave Moore wrote:
> Hello all-
>
> I'm trying to get started with PGP and there are some concepts I am
> having trouble with.
>
> I understand that a recipient of a PGP signed/encrypted message will
> have to get my public key to decrypt said message. What I don't
> understand is how this is carried out in a seemingly automatic fashion
> for many of the email messages I receive, e.g. postings from mailing
> lists, in which I see the 'BEGIN PGP SIGNED.. ' and the signature at
> the end. I didn't decrypt these messages, and I have no idea how they
> got decrypted.
>
> When I encrypt a message and send it to myself, the message I see is
> decidedly not decrypted. I did notice this header..
>
> OpenPGP: id=5847D5CF;
> url=http://random.sks.keyserver.penguin.de:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5847D5CF 
>
>
> in the outgoing encrypted test message I sent, which leads me to
> suspect that it might have something to do with this process, but
> still, my message is not decrypted.
>
> How does this work?
> Dave

--
---------------------------------------------------------------
Eric White                            ewhite () ssc wisc edu
Director of Technical Operations      fax: 608-262-8432
UW Survey Center                      phone: 608-265-4066
University of Wisconsin - Madison     http://www.wisc.edu/uwsc/
GPG fp:  7724 64BF 3CD0 86F7 E910 B7BC D9D8 F395 0FD5 4B51