How does encrypted email work?
You will use public key encryption for encrypted email. This is how it works. You generate a private key and a public key. The private key is kept by you. The public key can be distributed to anyone. To send encrypted mail to another party, you encrypt the email with this person’s public key. Since this person holds his private key only he can can decrypt the email which was encrypted with his public key. Similarly if someone wants to send an encrypted email to you, he/she encrypts the message with your public key. Since only you hold the private key, only you can decrypt and read it.
