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I don't understand the PGP manual. How do I do to generate my pair of keys ?

Once you have downloaded your PGP application (ex. http://www.gpg4win.org/), start the PGP-wizard which will guide you throughout all the necessary steps to the creation of your pair of keys. Therefore you need to open your PGP-keys application and go to the menu "keys" : "new".

If you open PGP for the first time, you will automatically find yourself in the PGP-wizard. In the PGP-wizard, choose your name and email adress. Then the encryption algoritm (the default one is alright) and the size of your key. The default size of 2048 is amply sufficient.

In the following window, you will be asked the termination date of your PGP key. You can leave it on "Never" at least if you don't want to generate a temporary key. The following step is very important and requires all your attention. You must carefully choose your passphrase : that phrase you will need to encrypt or decrypt messages. So choose a passphrase that you can easily remember : a piece of a song or a poem (how longer the passprhase, how more secure your keys will be). You can't forget your passphrase otherwise your generated pair of keys would be useless. Once you have been through this step, you will find your key in the main window of PGP-keys.

The moment has come now to make a backup copy of your pair of keys. Please open the "keys" menu once again, then clic on "export", and insert a removable storage device like a USB stick in your computer. In the backup window, you have to select the option "include private key". Then hide your removable storage device in a safe place. You can also use it to import your keys on another computer with PGP on it.

Once your pair of keys has been generated, you can distribute your public key to everyone. But you must keep your secret key safe and never give it to anyone ! People will be able to encrypt a message with your public key but you will be the only one capable of reading it (using your private key). And if you want to encrypt a message before you send it to someone, you will first need to ask him his public key. Besides, you can also publish you public key on a public key server (so that everyone can access it).

Now send us your public key at support@all2all.org in order to receive confidential informations such as access codes. To do that, you have to launch the PGP-keys application and open an empty email in your mail software at the same time. You can simply drag and drop the image of your public key from the PGP application into your email. Be sure to put the correct recipent adress : and send it to us.

Alternatively, you can send us an email with the adress of the public PGP key server where we can download your key. In this case, please precise under which name and email adress it has be found.

You will find hereafter, as an exemple, the public key used by the support service team of all2all (draged and droped in this FAQ). If you store it as a text file or if you select it and drop it in the main window of your PGP-keys application, you can import it in your public keys ring and use it to send us encrypted messages :

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)

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yC/COcaB5xdDJjq894sCSRRZYbxm/jbbZdAkYRzZBbVffQF/nzDieYBBDcMUmAjw
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=7zY7
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----