Encryption software with Vista

Moira,
If you want seemless integration with Thunderbird, I think you're going to have to use the enigmail plugin. I like the portable version of thunderbird with enigmail from portableapps.com. You can use truecrypt to encrypt a usb drive and store your thinderbird client. That way, your private keys are protected. I used that setup for a while. I'm now actually just using the FireGPG firefox plugin with my gmail account. Its a nice plugin and makes encrpyting gmail very easy. You have to install GnuPG for the FireGPG plugin which you can use to encrypt files. For file shreding, I use SDelete from the former Sysinternals which you can get from microsoft now. Link here.

Ah well, that gives me some ideas - thanks everyone!

Installled the FireGPG thanks! I can keep that PGP signature for a short while longer, but soon I won't have XP and there is no free PGP for Vista. I do use Kryptainer for encrypting files and have a shredding facility, though it could use improving so I might try your link to SDelete.

I've hastily had to try and think of a replacement signature ..... and I installed GnuPG which ran from a command prompt, created keys and then invited me to type some text. I did this, and then - what next? I didn't actually get the hang of it too well.

One thing I must watch is that I get all my encrypted files decrypted before losing XP (and PGP) altogether.

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I do use Kryptainer for encrypting files

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What version of Vista do you have? I know that Ultimate supports full drive encryption at the hardware level, [bitlocker] but you will take a performance hit of about 15-20% ... I don't think any of the other versions have that ability though. I think they support software based encryption though, through the OS, but that is more vulnerable than HW based.

I have Ultimate and Home Premium - I plan on putting Ultimate on as the OS. I don't have a need for encrypting the entire drive, just odd files and a few emails. I was happy with Hushmail until there was the story on Slashdot that they'd given some authorities the private keys of account holders:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/65213,...thing-but.aspx


PGP turned out to be too complex for most of my correspondents anyway, or they'd get complacent. I'll see how I get on with FireGPG and SDelete - will just have to change my signature soon as I lose XP for good! Possibly I might put on a small install of it on my new computer, just for this sort of reason.

You sure SDelete works with Vista? It isn't mentioned as one of the supporting operating systems on that page.