PGP works by generating a key pair: a public key and a private key. If the people you are communicating with are unable to create a ProtonMail account, you can use our Encrypt for Outside feature or, for more technically proficient contacts, ProtonMail’s external PGP encryption. Using PGP with ProtonMailīy far the easiest way to use PGP with someone else is for both you and your contact to create a ProtonMail email address. To provide end-to-end encryption between ProtonMail and external email providers, ProtonMail provides two options: Encrypt for Outside and PGP encryption. While we store your emails in an encrypted format on our servers, the external email provider of the person you are emailing might have access to the emails you send.

ProtonMail can also be used to communicate with external email accounts without end-to-end encryption. Additionally, all messages in ProtonMail inboxes are protected with PGP encryption to prevent us (or anyone else) from reading or sharing your emails, a concept known as zero-access encryption. With ProtonMail, anyone can use PGP regardless of their technical knowledge.Īll messages between ProtonMail users are automatically end-to-end encrypted.

We have built ProtonMail with PGP fully integrated, so you don’t need to take any additional steps to use PGP encryption. Historically, PGP was difficult to use, and impossible for most users to set up and regularly use for their own email communications. PGP is a proven method of protecting email communication with end-to-end encryption (which prevents emails from being read by any third parties, including your email provider).

How to encode a message in pgp