Email security on Android

With the growing usage of mobile phones for e-mail, it's interesting to be able to use PGP also on your mobile. This way your can still read the messages send to you in PGP on your phone and not only on your computer.

PGP on Android: APG

PGP on mobile phones is very new - currently there are not many tools available for Android phones to use PGP. Its a pity there are not more options and easier softwares to configure and install, however if you do set it up then the same rules apply for using PGP on Android as normal PGP usage as described in the PGP/Secure emailing chapter.

For Android you need at least the APG application. This is a small tool which makes PGP encryption possible on the phone. You can use APG to manage your private and public. The options in the application are quite straightforward if you are a little convenient with PGP in general.

Management of keys is not very well implement yet. The best way is to manually copy all your public keys to the SD card in the APG folder. Then it's easy to import your keys. After you've imported your public and private keys, PGP encrypting, signing and decrypting will be available for other applications as long as these applications have integrated encryption/PGP.

PGP enabled e-mail on Android: K-9 Mail

The default mail application does not support PGP. Luckily there is an excellent alternative: K-9 Mail. This application is based on the original Android mail application but with some improvements. The application can use APG as it's PGP provider. Setting up K-9 Mail is straightforward and similar to setting up mail in the Android Default mail application. In the settings menu there is an option to enable "Cryptography" for PGP mail signing.

If you want to access your PGP mails on your phone this application is a must have.

Please note, due some small bugs in K-9 Mail and/or APG, it's very advisable to disable HTML mail and only Plain text. As HTML mails are not encrypted nicely and are often not readable.