Digital Identity and Encryption

Without your real name, address, or physical location, how do you identify yourself online? Mathematically, with encryption keys.

Picture a mail slot with a locked door on the box. Anyone can drop in a letter, but only you can open the box.

• The open slot is your public key. Anyone can write to you.
• The key to the door is your private key. Only you can read what arrives.

Online it gets fiddly, but that’s no reason to give up. You don’t need to be an expert.

Securing your email

Most email is unencrypted. Every server along its path can store and read it. You’ve met the alternative: the “secure portal” your doctor or accountant sends you to for tax returns. Why not have that level of care for everything?

Option A: An encrypted provider

Try a free trial of Proton or Tuta. They work like Gmail or iCloud, but only you and the recipient can read your mail. Every user who leaves Gmail also starves the machine that profiles you.

You don’t have to burn Gmail down. Think of it as the public lobby: shopping, newsletters, spam. Proton is your private office: banking, medical, family. Forward Gmail to Proton and check one inbox. Move just your five most important accounts first: bank, medical, password vault, Apple or Google ID, investments. For new shopping accounts, use SimpleLogin aliases so spam never reaches your office.

Option B: GPG with your current email

Not ready to switch? Practice on a friend. You don’t need a terminal; Gpg4win runs on Windows.

1. Create your key pair in the app.
2. Enter a name and email (real or alias).
3. Ask a friend to do the same.
4. Import their public key and encrypt a message with it.
5. Send it.
6. They decrypt it with their private key.

You’ve just sent your first encrypted message. Feel good about it. To skip the copy-paste, use Thunderbird, which encrypts automatically once you import keys.

Securing your chats

SMS has zero privacy. iMessage is encrypted, but it’s closed source, tied to Apple, and you can’t verify what happens to your keys or backups.

Start with Signal: open source and audited. Replace SMS and iMessage with it.

For more privacy, try SimpleX. It has no user IDs, not even a phone number. You add contacts with one-time links.

The same move from unencrypted to encrypted applies to your operating system and online services too.