GnuPG the GNU Privacy Guard or GPG is GNU’s secure communication and data storage tool.
GnuPG is essentially a free and open source replacement for PGP – it complies with the IETF standard for PGP: OpenPGP. This means that GnuPG is compatible with the proprietary PGP.
Versions are available for Windows and Linux/Unix, and it is often bundled with Unix or Linux distributions. A native OSX port is available as well, called MacGPG.
GPG is front-ended graphically by Seahorse (GNOME) or by applications that embed it, such as email applications such as KMail, Evolution and Horde. GPG also has an API wrapper project called GPGME, which interacts with the command line interface of GPG to abstract interactions with it to a standard API.
GnuPG uses the standard PGP encryption – which means that messages such as emails are encrypted using a combination of keys, public and private. Public keys are exchanged freely over widely known key servers, a private key then decrypts the message. In contrast to PGP, the cryptography methods used can be non-patented.
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