online email usage with gnupg

[Joseph Bruni]

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Not likely. To do so would require uploading your private key to the 
various services assuming that they have built the necessary web pages 
to prompt you for your encryption passphrase, etc. This would make your 
private key accessible to anyone on the service (an administrator) and 
would nullify any security benefit.

Indeed, the only way you can ensure security using public-key 
cryptography is to ensure your exclusive access to the private key 
itself. There is probably a way to use public-key cryptography using 
webmail but would be really cumbersome to use.

Barring the use of digital signatures, it is conceivable to design a 
webmail system whereby you could send encrypted emails if the public 
keys of the recipients could be loaded onto the webmail servers. But 
does that really solve the problem? Without the private key to 
digitally sign the email, anyone could forge an email as if from you.


On Mar 29, 2005, at 8:45 PM, Joey Harrison wrote:

> is there any way to use gnupg with online email services like gmail,
> yahoo, and hotmail?
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