Encrypt GMail using GPG Keys April 4, 2007
Posted by Carthik in Friends Etc., ubuntu.trackback
FireGPG is the firefox plugin you need to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify emails in Gmail using your trusty GPG keys. The installation instructions are heavy on sentence ending exclamations, but they let us know that you can use this extension in Linux.
Ubuntu Blog 
Hrmmm using GPG with thunderbird/enigmail is actually easy already and since you can do pop/smtp with gmail, I’m not sure why browser-based encryption would guarantee it to be easy. Crypto isn’t something that is easy to grasp even for beginners.
It could be handy if you don’t fetch gmail and you need to verify a gpg-signed email sent to gmail.
I had wondered in the past about how I could verify the signature of a GPG-signed email received at my gmail address, so I found this extension interesting, is all.
I don’t blame you, as Achraf does it on his site, but it’s Gmail, not GMail.
Thanks for your post! Only yesterday I was wondering how to decrypt gpg signed stuff in my gmail, as I wanted to sign the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. After installing firegpg this was a breeze! 🙂
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. It is a big help to me since the place where I work blocks the ports needed for ThunderBird to connect to GMail. This just made my week.
These are excellent news. In an envirnment where you feel you can trust Gmail and your browser, this may be useful, although I don’t use Gmail for personal reasons I can see its use.
I also wanted to clarify the terms used as they are often mistaken / confused:
gpg is the command line executable name (gpg.exe in Windows).
GnuPG is the application name.
PGP is the original application name that Phil Zimmermann developed.
OpenPGP is a proposed standard.
So this should be titled something like “Using OpenPGP encryption and digital signatures in Gmail”. It would also be nice to mention gnupg is required, FireGPG is only a front-end to GnuPG.
When I click “download firegpg” I get this error.
Firefox could not install the file at
http://firegpg.tuxgamily.org/stable/firegpg.xpi
download error -228
Currently trying to find out what that error means. Im running feisty. Any ideas?
Just one correction – FireGPG is an extension and not plugin.
Thanks for this wonderful blog and the tips you keep posting.
Elias -> Due at the update to 0.3.1 (file was blocked)
Yes, it is an extension, not a plugin, and yes, on Linux systems it works with GnuPG 🙂
Thanks for the comments, folks.
Ummm…can somebody explain why this tool is useful? I thought Gmail was already encrypted?
I’m entirely confused on this one.
This is useful if, say you have a gmail account, and I send you an encrypted email that I encrypted using GnuPG, or PGP.
To read that mail, you will need to decrypt it using some PGP/GPG app. The extension does just that.
Some people digitally sign their email (to authenticate the email as being sent from them, and not someone else pretending to be them). To verify this, you would have to use PGP/GPG. This extension will make that much easier.
the_glue ->
Due at the update to 0.3.1 (file was blocked)
Im sorry what do you mean by this?
Maybe I”m just an idiot =—
I installed it, generated a keypair, but nowhere can I find a button, or menu item in Firefox to encrypt, even when I’m composing on a gmail page.
Problem solved for me. I downloaded the file then dragged it into a firefox window and it installed fine.
We’re back up and running after a short downtime. I’m more concerned with it not happening again, and Dreamhost seems to be working to resolve that before it happens. Overall, I’m a very happy customer.
>>> These are excellent news. In an envirnment where you feel you can trust Gmail and your browser, this may be useful, although I don’t use Gmail for personal reasons I can see its use.
THe great thing about FireGPG is that you don’t need to trust Gmail (only Firefox and FireGPG)
Forget about FireGPG, it is constantly being broken by Googe’s updates to Gmail. Use a local GPG implementation instead and copy-paste
What david said!
Broken on 16 October 2009.
We cannot depend on FireGPG.
I had wondered in the past about how I could verify the signature of a GPG-signed email received at my gmail address, so I found this extension interesting,
its really good and informative site.I will definently visit this site again thanks
ooh neat. thanks!
Hrmmm using GPG with thunderbird/enigmail is actually easy already and since you can do pop/smtp with gmail, I’m not sure why browser-based encryption would guarantee it to be easy. Crypto isn’t something that is easy to grasp even for beginners.
Thanks for this wonderful blog and the tips you keep posting.
What david said!
Broken on 16 October 2009.
We cannot depend on FireGPG.
I installed it, generated a keypair, but nowhere can I find a button, or menu item in Firefox to encrypt, even when I’m composing on a gmail page.
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