Home → Beta →

Encrypted draft, but I have forgotten the passphrase for my key

• Edit

Daniel

20 Jul, 2015 10:30 PM

If a draft has been encrypted automatically and i've forgotten the passphrase, its basically hopeless right?

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Steve on 20 Jul, 2015 10:33 PM

   

   Hi Daniel,

   please don't hijack other people's discussions. You can always create a new discussion if you need help. It turns out, it's much easier to help users on a case by case basis.

   Thus, I've split your discussion.

   This KB has details on the situation of a forgotten passphrase:
   http://gpgtools.tenderapp.com/kb/gpg-keychain-faq/how-to-revoke-a-k...

   Let me know if it was helpful,
   steve

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by Daniel on 20 Jul, 2015 10:44 PM

   

   Sorry, If i could delete it I would. I'm sure your software is great when emailing other people that also use it, but all i ended up doing was encrypting my own draft emails, and spend a lot of time unlocking the Open PGP green box.

   Thanks for the response tho. I mistook the page for a forum after coming off a google search. I didn't realise it was more like a ticketing system. I wasn't really sure anyone would reply at all.

   Unfortunately the passphrase was not in the keychain, as I never saved it. I had no idea it would be able to encrypt drafts without entering a password. Took me by surprise.

   • Edit

3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Steve on 20 Jul, 2015 10:54 PM

   

   Hi Daniel,

   I feel your frustration. No worries about the discussion. It's all cleaned. This basically works like an open forum (except if you set your new discussion to private). But things get nasty if several people with (maybe) different issues flock together.

   The fact that we do encrypt drafts by default was a very conscious design decision, based on the fact that if drafts are not encrypted and then sometimes stored on the server of the mail provider, sensitive informations could be leaked and we didn't want to risk this. But you can of course disable the feature if you like. It is under Mail.app > Preferences > GPGMail > Encrypt drafts.

   But before going ahead and doing that, I'd rather recommend storing your passphrase in the OS X keychain. That way you can continue working on your draft, without having to re-type your passphrase every time. Please also see the KB-article about that: http://gpgtools.tenderapp.com/kb/faq/passphrase-management

   So if you say you have indeed forgotten your key passphrase, I'd suggest to revoke your current key. Create a new key and go with that.

   Before doing anything: create a backup, then closely read this KB: http://gpgtools.tenderapp.com/kb/gpg-keychain-faq/how-to-revoke-a-k...

   #3 has the details on key revocation.

   Hope this helps,
   steve

   • Edit

4. Steve closed this discussion on 26 Nov, 2015 10:36 PM.