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GPG Mail: Can recipient open encrypted message without GPG installed on their computer

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Douglas Darlington

09 Sep, 2019 04:33 PM

Client cannot open my encrypted email. I have sent her a verification email but since I have no way of helping her out on her end, I need to know if simply verifying her email in the public key will be enough even with a supplied password. She does not have GPG installed on her computer.

Expected
I thought she would simply try to open the email and it would request a password.

macOS                   10.14.6     18G95
GPG Suite               2019.1      2529    (f7527f7dd4)
GPG Mail                3.2         1378    (8bf46a6372)    28 trial days remaining
GPG Keychain            1.5         1577    (6daf90a76b)
GPG Services            1.12        1096    (17b325bb15)
MacGPG                  2.2.17      938     (cb13729b0b)
GPG Suite Preferences   2.2         1115    (f813be50a8)
Libmacgpg               1.0         920     (b50a3b4b50)
pinentry                1.1.0.1     14      (c191c4128d)

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Steve on 10 Sep, 2019 06:29 AM

   

   Hi Douglas,

   welcome to the GPGTools support platform. Sorry you are having problems using GPG Suite.

   The requirement to send an encrypted email is, that you do have the public key of the recipient. Otherwise the encrypt button will be inactive. This KB-article explains, why it is still a good idea, to sign outgoing messages.

   So in your case if you indeed do have the public key of the recipient, the recipient would have to install OpenPGP on their system in order to decrypt. If the recipient no longer wants to use OpenPGP, you should disable their public key in GPG Keychain. To do that double click the public key in question and tick the "Disable" box. Ideally in that case, the key owner would revoke their key and upload the revoked version.

   All the best,
   Steve

   • Edit

2. Steve closed this discussion on 16 Oct, 2019 11:51 AM.