mguhlin

Keep Your Stuff Secure

While I subscribe to the idea that we should encrypt all our communications, to be honest, it’s often a pain. I try to encrypt top secret text messages to my family using the cross-platform Telegram app. It’s easy to use, cross-platform, and allows voice messages in a way similar to WhatsApp, which isn’t secure (IMHO).

Image Source: https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has come out with its Secure Messaging Scorecard and I’m pleased to see some of the apps I’ve recommended to others on there, such as:

  1. Telegram: Fails audited code–they’ve announced a hacking contest, though–and past communications are not secure if your encryption key is stolen. Otherwise, this ranks highly for me as a must-have app. While I have used TextSecure, it’s not available for iOS, which means it’s not an option (you may also want to read this paper on TextSecure via cryptome.org).
  2. Mailvelope: You may recall that this is an easy to use text/messaging encryption tool.

In the future, I hope EFF evaluates file encryption tools. 

Image Source: Minilock.io

My go-to ones right now include the following in order of preference:

  1. AESCrypt.com – Free, open source and available for Mac, Windows, Linux and has an Android encryption tool.
  2. Minilock – From their web site: “miniLock uses your email and secret passphrase to generate a miniLock ID. miniLock IDs are small and easy to share online — anyone can use your ID to encrypt files to you, and you can encrypt files to friends using their miniLock IDs.” It is quite easy to use, even on a Chromebook.
  3. Secret Space Encryptor – This features a java app and works on Android.
While I still use GPG/PGP, I have to admit that safeguarding a private key can be difficult and I much prefer using one of the 3 tools above.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

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