This is the first installment of what will likely be a series of articles aimed at introducing new Bitcoiners to these and other technologies that you can use to enhance your privacy and keep sensitive information away from the prying eyes of governments and data thieves.

We're going to start off this series by introducing you to PGP, which is by far the most widely used encryption software available and a critical component to online privacy. Whether you're purchasing drugs from Silk Road or just sending emails to friends and family, it's something with which even casual internet users should familiarize themselves.

What is PGP?

PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy. At it's core, it is an internet standard (called OpenPGP) used for data encryption and digital signatures. Software that employs this standard is available in both a free, open source version produced by the Free Software Foundation called the GNU Privacy Guard (or GPG for short) as well as a low-cost commercial version.