Enigmail

Enigmail is an appealing and fairly simple to use piece of software designed to function as a Mozilla Thunderbird and Seamonkey extension which provides you with OpenPGP encryption and authentication capabilities, so you can protect the contents of the messages you send and receive.

The addon’s installation consists of drag and dropping it onto an open window of the email client, confirming your action, then restarting Thunderbird for the changes to take effect.

Enigmail integrates into the client as a dedicated menu in the ‘Write’ window, where you can access and configure its functioning parameters, generate and manage encryption keys.

The extension relies on OpenPGP in order to protect your emails and, for this reason, you need to have it installed and configured on your computer. However, to make matters easier for you, Enigmail can help you set it up in just a few clicks.

When writing a message, you can easily decide if you wish to encrypt or sign it, as well as attach your public key, so the intended recipients will be able to open and read it.

From a dedicated window (‘OpenPGP Options’) you can choose which public or private keys that you want to work with, as well as the default behavior whenever you send messages. As such, you can sign as well as encrypt all emails or only the ones you indicate.

The ‘Key Management’ component enables you to create new keys for your account, defining the expiry date, a passphrase, along with a size and type (RSA or RSA & El Gamal). These, alongside several other configuration parameters, help you ensure your correspondence is secure at all times.

To summarize, Enigmail is a practical and efficient extension that can help those who rely on Thunderbird or Seamonkey as their client to successfully encrypt emails and ensure nothing is accessible to anyone other than the intended recipient.