NGO Security Team

Help Request Procedures Page

This is Step Two in the process of getting help for your freeware version of PGP. Now that you have already read our MiniFAQ. Please read through this short document, then click the "Help" button at the bottom of this page to proceed to the Help Request Form.

To make the best use of the NGO Security Team, there are two things you must do to prepare a good question (a good question gets an answer):

    RTFM.

RTFM means "Read The F(antastic) Manual!"

Please do your homework before asking questions: we're here to help you learn to use PGP, or to help you figure out how to customize it, but we're not here to do all the work for you. The complete PGP documentation always accompanies an "official" PGP freeware release archive. The original PGP manual was written by Philip Zimmermann (the original PGP author), and it's actually pretty entertaining (for software documentation). The manual explains the social context of PGP, basic Public Key Cryptography concepts and even some caveats to keep you from getting too complacent about your security.

Please read the documentation before attempting your initial PGP setup and/or before generating your first PGP keypair — and definitely before submitting question(s) to the NGO Security Team. We will assume you've looked through the basic documentation already, so please don't make us remind you!

The newer (PGP v6.x and later) installers always install the full PGP documentation, which includes the "Intro to Crypto", describing the basics of public key cryptography. The complete documentation for several versions of PGP is also available at the international PGP website. This should be your first stop if you are new to PGP and cryptography in general. The PGP documentation also includes the "PGP User's Guide", which covers the basic command functions of PGP: you should definitely look at that document before asking our volunteers for help. You should also read the ReadMe file that comes with your copy of PGP: it has last-minute changes and warnings that may be extremely important.
NOTE: The PGP documents are PDF files (Portable Document Format), so you'll need the freeware Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and/or print them.

(Arne Helme's easy-to-browse hypertext version of Phil Z's original PGP v2.x documentation is somewhat out-of-date, but still good reading.)

There are many other FAQs and information sources about PGP. The short list below will get you started, and will probably answer your question. If any links have expired, please let us know.

PGP-Related Sites:

   • The commercial PGP website.

   • Arnoud Engelfriet's extensive comp.security.pgp FAQ

   • Michael Johnson's NACA, the North American Cryptography Archive.

   • John Young's authoritative Cryptome information site

   • Sam Simpson's excellent PGP FAQ

   • Tom McCune's excellent PGP Questions & Answers page.

   • Peter Gutmann's Crypto Link Farm

   • Ståle Schumacher Ytteborg's PGPi FAQ.

   • Michael Johnson's Where is PGP FAQ.

   • Francis Litterio's Cryptography, PGP and Your Privacy page.

   • Mathew's comprehensive Introduction to PGP

   • Jeff Licquia's Official PGP v2.x FAQ (old, but good).

   • Derek Atkins' PGP v2.x technical FAQ, Known Bugs, and Improvements page at MIT.

   • The original Cypherpunks Archive at UC Berkeley.

   • A definitive Cypherpunks mailing list archives at Venona.

  And of course, you can search the Web yourself using any of the well-known search engines, such as:

   • The most popular ever: Google.

   • Digital Equipment Corp's Alta Vista search engine.

   • C|NET Central's Search.com to search using a selection from the top Web search engines.

PGP-Related Usenet Newsgroups:

   • The "alt.security.pgp" newsgroup.

   • The "comp.security.pgp.discuss" newsgroup.

   • The "sci.crypt" newsgroup (quite technical).

   • The "talk.politics.crypto" newsgroup.

   • The "news.answers" newsgroup.

    Prepare a Clear Question.

We try to pay the appropriate respect each question sent to us, but we occasionally get questions that aren't even clearly asked. It's OK to ask a difficult question, but a question we can't even understand makes it nearly impossible for us to help you, and a question that doesn't include the necessary information is completely useless. We prefer a "clear" question with the following characteristics:

• it includes all pertinent info we might need to know;
• it completely describes your PGP problem or the concept you're unclear about;
• it's ethical and doesn't ask us to violate the laws of any country in any way (e.g., "Can you help me break into my wife's diary?" No.);
• it's short, to-the-point, pithy, brief, compact, concise, condensed and succinct;
• it's written in coherent, complete, punctuated sentences, using something approximating standard English grammar. (Don't worry: it's OK if English is not your native language — just try your best.)

Thank you for reading through these procedural guidelines and for reading the PGP documentation. To prepare your question about PGP for the NGO Security Team, proceed to the third and final step, our Help Request Form