The encryption prevents that the emails sent can be intercepted by other people while they are in transit to the recipient, a way to protect the privacy of the user and to secure any sensitive data, in this guide we will see how to send emails encrypted with Mozilla Thunderbird, precisely using Enigmail.
Enigmail is an extension of Mozilla Thunderbird, e-mail client, a plug-in that can encrypt, decrypt and sign emails, simple enough to use, we explain what are the steps to install it and make it work properly.
Open Mozilla Thunderbird and click on the menu icon at the top right of the window and on Add-ons, then on Explorer and position on the search box by entering the name Enigmail, after a few seconds you will have the possibility to install the extension.
To make this work, you have to restart Mozilla Thunderbird, once done Enigmail will be present in the extensions but will not work without GnuPG, even in this case we think the program, through a wizard, to download the extension and install it.
Once this installation is finished, Mozilla Thunderbird will restart and among the menus there will also be the Open PGP option, click and choose the item Key management, here to create the cryptographic key, also in this case following a wizard.
Go ahead, keep the default settings and reach the Create key entry, choose the email address and type the word in the Passphrase box. We recommend that you choose a fairly complex talk.
Going forward you are asked to create a certificate of revocation, important step because only in this way we could recover the key in case we forget it.
We must also make known the public key so that anyone who wants to send a message can do so by requesting the Keyserver, in this case click on Open PGP and Key Management and then on the key created, from the Keyserver menu choose the Send public keys to Keyserver.
After understanding how to install the necessary plugins we come to explain how to send emails encrypted with Mozilla Thunderbird: retrieve an email from someone, we save the alphanumeric identifier of its public key and paste in Key Management> Keyserver> Key Finder, this way will recover its public key, when you write an email click on the Open PGP icon and tick the entry Encrypt the message and encrypted mail will be sent.