I spent some time today playing around with GnuPG. I want to have a portable file with all of my credit card numbers, pins, expiration dates, phone numbers, etc. Naturally, this is not a good thing to put on a work computer, like my laptop that I am always using. I am the only person that ever uses this laptop, but I still don’t want a plain text file with this information laying around anywhere.
GnuPG can do a symmetric cypher with a passphrase, which means that it will encrypt a file with a password, and decrypt the file with the same password, without any public or private encryption keys.
GnuPG will do what I want it to do, but now I am questioning what use this will be. I am always reading about the importance of having all of your account numbers and agency telephone numbers backed up someplace in case you lose your wallet or whatever. So, I was thinking if this was on my laptop, it might be a decent emergency plan. But, what if I don’t have my laptop? I need to think about this some more.
Either way, I set up and registered a public key. So, if you want to send me something encrypted, my public key is here, and there is a link in the sidebar.