text encryption app/script?

[delwoode]

I know there are plenty of encryption apps that let you right click a folder and encrypt the contents or use a hidden drive etc.  What I am looking for is a simple app or script that makesit easy for you to make some text you are sending to a friend in an email unreadable to anyone else without the key/password to decrypt it. So the receiver will also need the same simple app on their pc.   Ideally you would be able to just highlight the text in your emal and press encrypt or a keyboard shortcut and maybe type in a password.

[Deozaan]

fSekrit would be awesome for this, except you normally can't attach EXE files in e-mail these days.

Though you could share a folder in DropBox or something similar to get the file to someone else.

Or there are ways of encrypting e-mail, but AFAIK that's relatively complicated and everybody needs to set up their client for encryption to be able to receive your e-mails at that point. I may be wrong about this since I don't know much about it.

[skwire]

I use GPG for this purpose.  I know Outlook, Thunderbird, and the email client I use (Becky) have plugins that make things pretty easy.  If you get it set up and want to send test emails with me, feel free.

http://www.gpg4win.org/
http://www.jumaros.de/rsoft/index.html (GPG Shell)

[Renegade]

You could use a compression utility and password protect it. WinZip has AES. WinRar has encryption. ALZip has AES and some others.

Password protected encryption does about the same job, but is easier to deal with. Talk to people about encryption software and their eyes will simply glaze over. "You send me your public certificate and I send you my public certificate, and you then..." At that point people are just lost. Symmetric non-public key encryption like you get in compression utilities is far simpler. "I send you the file, then you use the password to open it." People understand passwords.

However DO NOT use ZIP 2.0 encryption. It is weak. If you have a file in the archive that is known, then decrypting everything else is almost trivial. This is a flaw in ZIP 2.0 encryption and it is serious. If you KNOW that nobody has any of the files in the archive, then it's safe.

AES or ARIA are excellent.