* There is a general standard for public key encryption called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#OpenPGP OpenPGP]. Popular encryption engines including PGP and GPG are compliant to this standard
* To use public key encryption you will need a key pair, an encryption engine and (optionally) an interface with your email program
* Your key pair is portable, you can change the email program and encryption engine, you can use using the same encryption method from different computers. Essentially the key pair is made up of two distinct (but interdependent) files - the public key file and the private key file. Keep a copy of them.
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