OUR EXPERT
Shashank Sharma is a trial lawyer in Delhi, India. He’s been writing about open source software for 20 years, and lawyering for 10.
Some messages are just too private to be shared directly with the recipient. Although the need might not arise often, it’s imperative that you know the right encryption tool if you want to share messages privately. But the word encryption conjures a jumble of other words, such as algorithms, ciphers, salts, public and private keys, and so on, which might seem like a little too much trouble to master when all you want to do is organise a surprise party for a beloved boss’s retirement.
bills itself as a modern and friendly alternative to which has long been the torch bearer for encryption across Linux and Unix systems.is not as robust as and does not aim to be a stand-in replacement for it in every instance. In fact, is designed with the classic Unix philosophy of ‘doing one thing well’ in mind. To that end, can be used to encrypt messages. And that’s it. Of course, the message could be stored in a text file and encrypted using a myriad of ways, such as passwords or keys.
