You will have heard the abbreviation PGP used many times but had not had a chance to learn more about it. XcooBee uses PGP extensively and has support build in for many interchanges.
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications.
PGP and similar software follow the OpenPGP standard (RFC 4880) for encrypting and decrypting data. At XcooBee we allow users to bring their own keys that they manage. By publishing the public part of their key users enable others to communicate in an encrypted manner. Simply go to your Settings:Security tab to manage your keys. (You will need to be a basic level subscriber for this to be visible.)
If you use PGP, the XcooBee network will have absolutely no way to read your communication or documents. You will, on the other hand, need to be able to decrypt communication that you receive that is encrypted somehow.
We recommend that you use open source PGP tools that you can install and run on your desktop to decrypt and encrypt your communication. You can for example digitally sign your files in such a way that ensures to recipients that only you are the legitimate sender of such communication.
Similarly, files can be signed in such a way that only you can open it.
Desktop Tools
On windows computers we recommend the use of Gpg4win.
On Mac and Linux we recommend the use of Gnupg.org tools. Scroll down to GnuPG Binary Releases for the download of your choice.
Good Guides
These are guides published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on usage of PGP for personal protection and privacy.
Windows:
Mac:
Linux: