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How does Tiger Envelopes work?

Tiger Envelopes works between your mail client and the world, and automatically makes your messages private. Without Tiger, anyone can read your mail. With Tiger, whenever you and people you exchange mail use Tiger or other privacy software, no one can read it until it's unlocked. You don't have to do anything. You just read and write mail as usual. Tiger locks and unlocks secure messages for you.

If you want to peek behind the scenes, here's an example. Let's look at how mail between Ted and Alice works after they both install Tiger and have exchanged their first message. First, Ted starts his mail client and writes a message to Alice. The installer already set up Ted's and Alice's mail clients to use Tiger Envelopes. So as soon as Ted's client starts to send the message, Tiger Envelopes protects it. Now it's encrypted, so no one else can read the message without Alice's private key. The protected message passes through the various computers on the Internet until it arrives in Alice's computer. Tiger Envelopes automatically decrypts the message just before it's delivered to Alice's mail client. When Alice sends a message to Ted, the same thing happens.

If Alice isn't using Tiger, but is already using another popular encryption program, then Ted needs to send his key to Alice, and get her key. Then their mail is protected.

It's always a good idea to verify keys.

Related Topics

Can I still exchange plain email?

Can I use Tiger Envelopes with my existing mail client?

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