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everyday Encryption 

Encryption for Hvermannsen is actually very simple.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Discussions go high about encryption on the Internet. Government agencies in several countries believe this is an issue, and are trying to prevent encryption from becoming public domain. However, it seems that the United States can at least accept encryption solutions where they themselves sit with a key to the back door. But it is not just terrorists and criminals who need to hide their communications. Even ordinary people and reputable journalists may need not to appear completely naked to the technology.

Why should you care about this as a journalist in Norway, or as a regular citizen? To take an obvious example: Maybe you want to contact me or one of my journalist colleagues and tell you about important matters at your job, without your boss knowing about it. Maybe you are in contact with political opposition in a country where the authorities are pushing hard on activists. Or maybe you work in a company that has technological secrets, or that is to be protected from unauthorized sneak peeks?

There are many people who would like to have a look at the cards on the internet. I have a girlfriend who wrote to another girlfriend and mentioned Shakespeare in the text. That afternoon, an ad appeared for William Shakespeare's collected works that followed her as she surfed the web. She told it like a funny anecdote, but faded when I explained that Google has programs that read the contents of her Gmail account. Here the monitoring is automated, and it is no more personally meant than that anyone will make money from the knowledge of her.

I do not guarantee that this will work against the NSA, but it will work well against everyone else.

There is a large toolbox available to anyone who wants to learn about data encryption. I get overwhelmed and a little scared when I try to learn about this topic, and find reason to remind that most of us do not have the National Security Agency as the main enemy. If you are Edward Snowden or working on a leak similar to his file collection, you must of course choose the most advanced encryption solutions available. But this takes time and is not easy to use. I'm a hot supporter of using this technology, but would recommend adjusting the security level to the threat image you are actually dealing with. Therefore the key word "everyday encryption". In a Norwegian local newspaper or at an average workplace, you come a long way with much simpler methods.

If you have one Nowadays losing or being stolen from your PC, unauthorized persons can easily enter your email and read everything. In your browser, the thief finds the right online banking, and for most people it is easy to find the file with all your auto-stored passwords. If you don't like the idea of ​​this, encrypting your hard drive might be for you. Then it becomes impossible to read the information without having your (difficult) password. I do not guarantee that this will work against the NSA, but it will work well against everyone else. The feature is called FileVault on the security settings on Mac, and Bitlocker on PC. For PC users, it is only available on the Pro edition of Windows. Can also be used to encrypt external disks and memory sticks.

Need to send encrypted email? The most common method has been to create a "double key set" with a public "key" and a private "key", of which you keep the latter for yourself. Anyone who has your public key can send you encrypted email that can only be read with your private key stored in your email program. A number of programs support this, such as Mozilla Thunderbird. The advantage is that your regular email can be used normally, and then you turn on encryption if needed.

For those who think there is a lot of control with these keys, there are options like Hushmail or Protonmail. When you have such an account and send email to others with the same type of account, everything is encrypted. It is more user-friendly, but only works as intended within its environment.

Encrypted sms, telephony and chat have become very easy with new apps for the phones in recent years and are free.

Try it too! 

Encrypted telephony and SMS: Signal (app for iOS and Android).
Encrypted chat: Whatsapp (app for iOS and Android).
Encrypted Disk PC: Bitlocker (Windows 8 or Windows 10 – Pro Editions).
Encrypted Disk Mac: FileVault.

Encrypted email with two key sets: Feel free to try Mozilla Thunderbird.
Encrypted Email: Try Protonmail.

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