'Who uses this besides the government?'

Kyndra from Somewhere Out There -

I suppose encryption is mostly used by the goverment when they are being secretive about events or projects. Does anyone else really use encryption. I find it to be some complicated that most probably would not use this as a form of security? Enlighten me if I am wrong.

Comment #1 Elroy from New York -

You and I when we access our bank, credit card, and often times even our email with services like hotmail.

Hopefully, ALL the businesses that store information about us.

Comment #2 Keter from the garage door -

We use PGP software to encrypt emails containing sensitive in our business. This has become essential with the amount of hacking that is going on. Trouble is that it is a real pain to implement and installation can often cause one to curse wildly! It is about the most user-unfriendly stuff that I have ever used and the company seem completely indifferent to this. I have gotten used to it but can't say that I like it. Pity there is no really viable alternative out there today that I have heard of.

Comment #3 Delino from California -

Quite right. Every time you access a website over SSL, you are using encryption even though you may not be aware of it. So online banking and most e-commerce transactions will most certainly use some form of encryption. I also sometimes use PGP to encrypt my e-mail and I even encrypt some of my instant messaging.

Comment #4 Keter from the garage door -

One of the other useful functions that PGP serves is that allows you to encrypt any files on your system or conversely to 'shred' files so that they can never be recovered and read by 3rd parties. One of the mistakes many people make is to think that deleting a file renders it inaccessible to outsiders. Even deleting the files in the recycle bin doesn't achieve this. Apparently software is available that can even find files on a formatted hard drive, which is pretty scary.

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