Well in the age of all things net, encryption technology has also taken its place in the general world from the very sheltered world of defence, FBIs and KGBs. Encryption is basically converting text into jargon which cannot be deciphered by anyone except the sender and the recipient.
Due to the presence of hackers who are always trying to get into something which they shouldnt... believe me I appreciate their intelligence but I would also feel quite insecure if my mail was being read and tampered with. Or for that matter if my credit card number or social security number is tampered with.
Your privacy, integrity of the mail or text sent and authenticity is compromised. So what do you do?? There are many encryption services you can register to.. like PGP, Hushmail, Zixit ( which is available thru Yahoo), etc.
Now if you would like to go for a free encryption service, https://zendit.com is the right service to take up. Why ?? because it provides much more functionalities than any other encryption service. Next best thing is that all these services are for free.
Zendit.com has come up with a beta release which you can start using.
I have used this service and well I tried for the heck of it but I got hooked. It so interesting going through the features. In the home page you join and download the surfboard which rest on your explorer window in the for of a band with buttons for ease of use.
To give you some for basic information, Encryption uses keys to encrypt and decrypt a message. In zendit to make it more user friendly, you have a lock and a key. The lock is nothing but the public key with which you encrypt the mail and the key is your private key which you use to decrypt your mail. The public key is published to all your friends so that you can exchange encrypted mails. The private key is with you. If a friend if yours sends you an encrypted mail encrypted by your lock ( as your lock is published), you and only you can decrypt the mail as you have the key. The mail is made tamper proof with the signing feature where you sign the message with your private key... while sending.. and if the message is tampered you will know as it will give you a bad signature....
You register through the main homepage.. http://www.zendit.com. You have two options of registering.. I would recommend Quick Registration as this does not take much time and it automatically creates a lock and a key for you which you have to download when you login.
You have to confirm your registration in order to login.
The surfboard contains buttons for Login, Zendit, Dzend and Vault.
Login button helps you to login to the system.
Zendit functionality helps you to encrypt a mail and send it. For example you type your mail on the compose page and before clicking send you click Zendit. Your mail message will be encrypted and then sent.
DZend functionality is used to decrypt your mail messages. You should be in the read page of your mail system to decrypt the encrypted mail.
Vault This is the main console of the system. The vault has several functionalities which will help you manage your locks and keys.
Here you can start creating a lock and a key. You can also import locks and keys from a file in your PC or export a lock and a key to a file or a floppy. You can backup your locks and keys to the server and restore then when you need them. The vault also has a link to the Web Vault which leads you to your space in the Zendit server. This vault is available online and you can update or edit your information there. The Vault can be operated on without logging in. If you want to encrypt text messages via symmetric key encryption you can do so without logging in. Your text just needs a password. This does not involve your locks and keys. Its a bit insecure if the password used is leaked by the concerned parties.
Do remember to publish your locks as this is the way you will connect with your friends who wants to communicate with you through zendit.
I found this service pretty interesting.. zendit is coming up with more features soon.
You can also go through the supported sites in the homepage or in the Vault, If you want to know what sites it supports. At present you can send encrypted mails from Yahoo and Hotmail. I believe they will be coming up with a list of lot of sites through which you can send encrypted messages....
The disadvantages of this site are that the setup takes sometime to download because of its size...its about 2 MB... you might be getting some minor errors ... as it is a beta version... Moreover there is an extensive help as to how to go about the system .. so it should be easy moving around.
All in all its a great thing to start with... do try this service if you are interested in encryption services...
I found it cool.... :):).
If you have any concerns.. regarding this site .. do mail me .. I shall try my best to be of help...:)