I’ve gotten a few questions in the past several months from journalists and others who want to email in a more secure way but don’t yet know how to use PGP, so I figured I’d provide some basic instructions. If you have any further questions, please feel free to let me know.

Before you get started, a word of caution: Using encrypted email can protect the contents of your messages, but it doesn’t hide the fact that you were sending the message in the first place.

FOR PC USERS

Download and install GPG4Win

(1) Go to Gpg4win.org and click download. Click gpg4win 2.1.0 to start the correct download.

(2) The program should now be in your downloads folder as gpg4win-2.1.0.exe. Click or double click to run the program, and hit run.

(3) Click Next to install. The only default option you should change in this process is to install links on the desktop. Otherwise keep clicking Next.

(4) Check Root certificate defined or skip configuration, then click Next. Reboot the computer.

(5) Once the computer reboots, you’ll see icons that say GPA, Kleopatra and Gpg4win Documentation. We will be dealing only with the GPA, or GNU Privacy Assistant, so you can “recycle” those other items if you wish.

Set up your keys

(1) Double click the GPA icon to open it. This is your “key manager.”

(2) The first thing we’ll do is create a new key. To do this, click on the Key menu and select New Key.

(3) Insert your name and click Forward. Then insert the email address with which you will associate this key and click Forward. Elect to make a backup copy of the key when prompted.

(4) You’ll then be asked to create the password you’ll use to access your key. Don’t use something silly such as “password” or “12345,” and don’t use a word you can find in the dictionary or an easy-to-guess series of numbers like your birthday.

Instead, use something memorable but hard to guess. I have several techniques, including thinking of phrases associated with my own childhood memories and then misspelling them or inserting other characters in them. Some more good ideas are here.

(5) While the key is being created, move your mouse around or type into another application. This helps the program create a better key. Don’t get worried if it takes a few minutes. Once the program has finished creating your key, you’ll see it in the main window.

(6) You’ll want to send the “public” version of your key out to a keyserver, so other people can find it. To do that, click on Server, then Send Keys. Sometimes it takes a while for your key to be sent, but don’t worry; it will get there.

(7) Now you’ll need to get the keys of the people you want to email. To retrieve keys, click on Server, then Retrieve Keys. You have to know the ID of the key you’re looking for; to get this, you can ask the person whose key you want.

However, I personally have had problems recently retrieving keys using GPA and the key server. Instead, it may be easier to import the keys of friends you want to email.

People can send you keys as files, or they might link to them online. My key is here. To save it as a file, right click and select “save as,” then save it to your desktop or downloads file. To import it into the GPA, select Import, then select the saved file and click “open.”

Start Encrypting

Now that you have keys, you’re ready to encrypt. GPG4win has the ability to integrate with certain email programs, including Outlook 2003 and 2007, but I find Outlook integration cumbersome on my work PC, because of several issues related to our network in the office. So I am going to describe what to do if you want to use Outlook but will also walk you through encrypting text and files so that you can paste encrypted messages into any email program.

Using Outlook

(1) After you install GPG4win, GnuPG and an Outlook extension called GpgOL should be available when you restart Outlook.

(2) Compose a new message in Outlook and address it to someone whose key you have. Then go to Extras and Encrypt Message, or click the “lock” icon button in the toolbar.

One word of caution: This does not work well if you are using Microsoft Word as your editing program, and it works better if you use plain text emails rather than HTML emails.

Using GPA

(1) If you click on the clipboard icon in the main window, it will bring up a window where you can type or paste text.

(2) Once you have put your message into the window, click “encrypt.”
Another window will pop up, where you can select the key of the recipient. Click OK.

(3) The message will be converted to encrypted text. You can paste this into the body of an email and send it.

(4) You can also encrypt entire files by clicking the “Files” button in the main window.

(5) If you are sending an encrypted email to someone for the first time, it’s polite to include your public key, so they don’t have to look for it on the key server. To do this, simply hit Export in the main window, choose a name for your key, and click save. Then attach that file to the email you are sending.

Decrypt

In Outlook, encrypted messages should be decrypted automatically. To decrypt messages using GPA, simply copy and paste the full encrypted message into the clipboard, and click “decrypt.”

FOR MAC USERS

Download and Install GPGTools

(1) Download GPGTools by clicking the “Download” button here.

(2) Open the .dmg file that is saved onto your machine. (It will probably be in your Downloads folder, depending on your settings.)

(3) Click on GPGTools.mpkg to run the installer. Just keep clicking “continue” to install the program.

Set Up Your Keys

(1) Your Applications folder should now contain a program called GPG Keychain Access. Start that program.

(2) First, you’ll want to create your own PGP key. Click on the key icon labeled “new” at the top left of the GPG Keychain Access window.

(3) Fill out the form with the name and email address you want to use. Using the drop-down menu, change the length to 4096. Choose an expiration date a year from now. Click “Generate Key.”

(4) A window will pop up asking you for a password. This is where you make up the password you’ll use to access your key. Don’t use something silly such as “password” or “12345,” and don’t use a word you can find in the dictionary or an easy-to-guess series of numbers like your birthday.

Instead, use something memorable but hard to guess. I have several techniques, including thinking of phrases associated with my own childhood memories and then misspelling them or inserting other characters in them. Some more good ideas are here.

(5) Enter the password again to confirm it.

(6) While the key is being created, move your mouse around or type into another application. This helps the program create a better key. Don’t get worried if it takes a few minutes. Once the program has finished creating your key, you’ll see it in the main window.

(7) You’ll want to send the “public” version of your key out to a keyserver, so other people can find it. To do that, highlight your key, go to the Key menu and select “send to keyserver.” Sometimes it takes a while for your key to be sent, but don’t worry; it will get there.

(8) Now you’ll need to get the keys of the people you want to email. In the “Key” menu, select “Search for Key” and search for the name or email address of the person you want to contact. Generally, you should select only the most recent key, which will appear at the top of the list. This means you’ll need to uncheck the other keys; otherwise they will all be retrieved. Click “Retrieve Key” when you’re finished.

If someone has given you their public key as a file, you can import it by selecting the icon that says “Import” and selecting the file from your computer.

The person’s “public key” will now show up in your list, along with your own key.

Start Encrypting

Now you’re ready to encrypt! There are two main ways to do this, and I’ll outline both below. The first option is more straightforward for most users. The second option allows you to encrypt documents and other text, not just emails.

Using the Mac Email Program

(1) To use the Mac Email program with GPGMail, you must be using the email address that you have associated with your key. If that is the case, simply start up or restart your email program. GPGMail should have been integrated automatically.

(2) To send an encrypted message, type the name of a recipient whose key you have. You will see a little “lock” icon near the top right of the message pane. Set it in the “locked” position; your email will be encrypted.

Using OpenPGP Services (Works With Any Email, Not Just Mac Mail)

(1) You’ll need to set up your system to encrypt and decrypt text and files. To do this, go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences. Select the Keyboard icon and then click on Keyboard Shortcuts. In the left column, select Services.

On the right, you’ll see two sets of possible selections that start with “OpenPGP.” One will be under the “Files and Folders” section, while the other will be under “Text.” Make sure everything that starts with “OpenPGP” is selected on both sections. (Don’t worry if it tells you the shortcut is already used by another action. Just ignore that.) Then close out that window.

(2) Open up TextEdit or a word processing program and type a message. Once you’ve typed the message, select the text. Then go to the TextEdit menu (or the Microsoft Word menu, depending on which program you’re using) and hover over Services. Select OpenPGP:Encrypt. Check the name of your recipient, and then click “OK.”

(3) The program will convert your message into encrypted text. You can cut and paste that entire block (including the parts that say Begin PGP Message and End PGP Message) into whatever email program you use.

(4) One last thing to keep in mind: Make sure your recipient can find your public key, in case a response is required. You can do this by including your information in your original message, so your key can be found on the keyserver. Or you can go back to GPG Keychain Access, click on the “Export” key icon and save your public key as an ASCII file. This file can be attached to your email.

Decrypt

If you receive an encrypted email, you’ll need to decrypt it to read it. If you’re using Mac Mail, you’ll see options to do this when you get an encrypted message. If you’re using OpenPGP Services, simply select the entire block of encyrpted text, go to Services in the program drop-down and select OpenPGP:Decrypt.

This fall, The Wall Street Journal obtained a set of documents from a secretive trade show for surveillance and intelligence tech. The marketing materials reveal an industry that has grown rapidly in the past 10 years to supply the increasing demand from governments.

In addition to the usual articles in print and online, we wanted to give readers a chance to see the documents themselves. To do this, my fellow online journalists Zach Seward and Jeremy Singer-Vine suggested a service called DocumentCloud — part of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a nonprofit organization dedicated to investigative journalism. DocumentCloud lets journalists upload documents, annotate and categorize them and then use them in interactive graphics and the like. Documents are automatically run through an “optical character recognition” system, so they’re easily searched. Readers can view the journalists’ notes or download the original document as well.

As a new user of the system, I found DocumentCloud to be slick and incredibly easy to use. We couldn’t have completed our project so quickly without this tool. There are, however, a few things I’d love to see, including the ability to categorize annotations. This sort of finer control would allow readers to see only annotations related to glossary definitions of words, for example, or notes that correspond to certain stories. The folks at DocumentCloud are regularly updating the features. If you’re a journalist who regularly uses original source material, you should check it out.

The graphic above is part of a project Albert Sun, Zach Seward and I did for The Wall Street Journal that looks at a week’s worth of data from Foursquare — which is a mobile app that lets people “check in” to different locations. This was one of those projects that was done in our “spare time” — of which we have very little — so it took us a few months. Foursquare is still kind of a niche technology, used by only a small percentage of people, but it’s fascinating to see just what information you can get even from people who are willing to freely give up their data.

We looked specifically at New York and San Francisco, two cities with many early Foursquare users. Much of the data showed us what we already knew, for example that people in New York have weekday lunch in Midtown and go out in the Lower East Side on Friday nights. But there were some interesting tidbits as well. Among my favorites: The most disproportionately male locations were gay bars and … tech start-ups. And San Franciscans love coffee shops, while New Yorkers love bars. For more, see our graphic and blog post.

But one question still nags me about this field: What is “big data” in the first place? After all, large data sets have been around for years — although it’s true that we’re now talking petabytes instead of lowly terabytes. Something else that isn’t so new: “data mining,” or the parsing of said data to find patterns, often using artificial intelligence. Furthermore, it’s not always the size of the data that matters; the visualization techniques being discussed at Strata, for example, could very well be used with smaller data sets.

What’s new isn’t just the size of the data involved, or even the fact that it’s being analyzed, but how important and accessible it now is. The point is that data are now everywhere, being scattered like so many breadcrumbs. Tyler Bell at O’Reilly Radar has a good post on the many metaphors being used to describe the concept — like “the new oil,” “data deluge” and my personal favorite, “data exhaust.”

Several folks at the conference posed “data science” as an alternative term to “big data,” and I think that works. It certainly broadens the subject and seems more understandable.

One of my relatives, a speech therapist, mentioned to me recently how enthusiastic her students were about the iPad. It turns out she’s not alone.

In a Wall Street Journal article in October, I wrote about how the rise of mainstream tablet computers is having unforeseen benefits for children with speech and communication problems — and how it has the potential to disrupt a business where specialized devices can cost thousands of dollars.

The story involves a subject that I find fascinating — the way kids use technology. They seem to take to new gadgets more quickly than adults and are less afraid to experiment. But during the course of researching this article, I also found that there are seemingly simple things they have particular trouble understanding — like volume controls, or the proper use of the “home” button on the iPhone.

If you’re looking for more information on software and devices for speech therapy, I’m afraid I’m not an expert. (I’ve been getting a lot of requests along these lines.) But a good place to start is the American Speech Language Hearing Association.

For the past few months, my editor, Julia Angwin, has been leading a team looking into the use of information gleaned online and through other technology to compile dossiers of people and their preferences. The screen shot above provides a visualization of the primary database in this project — a look at the “trackers” on the 50 top websites, and the companies to which they send data about visitors’ browsing habits.

The full graphic, available here, gives a good snapshot of what’s going on in the burgeoning field of behavioral advertising, a complex and rapidly expanding field that is coming to rely on “big data.” And it raises plenty of questions for consumers; it’s not always clear what is done with the data or how long it is kept. Much of the data collected on browsing habits does not contain what’s known as “personally identifiable information,” such as name and Social Security number. But as dossiers become more comprehensive, researchers say such precautions don’t mean the profiles are actually anonymous.

As part of this series, which the Journal is calling “What They Know,” I wrote up some instructions for maintaining privacy online. And we’re working on some other exciting things. So stay tuned.

You can check out my work there. The blog looks at start-ups as well as major technology companies, but I’ve found that some of my favorite pieces involve tech research and technology policy. Recently I’ve looked at things like government use of technology in Manor, Texas, and whether doctors should Google their patients. If you work with these kinds of topics and have a tip for me, feel free to drop me a line at jennifer[dot]valentino[at]wsj[dot]com.

The Haitian national palace. Photo by the U.N.

The top items at WSJ.com right now include an interview with Glenn Beck and article about pay at banks. And it’s not just that Journal readers’ politics make them more likely to be interested in those topics; the New York Times isn’t currently listing any Haiti stories among its most read either. On the BBC, stories about Haiti are trumped by a video of a dog that understands Polish.

The Times post linked above suggests that people can’t cope with the scale of the problem, and so they watch pet videos instead. I think that might be true — except for the fact that people actually are coping with the problem as much as can be expected. They’re donating in record amounts through text messaging and the like; it might not be much, but it certainly could be less. Most people realize they can’t physically go to Haiti and save people, but they aren’t being completely inactive, either.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know. I’d guess, though, that people are just successfully compartmentalizing the news and quickly making decisions about what actions (like donating) actually help them cope and what actions probably wouldn’t do much at this point except make them sad.

Unfortunately, it’s not my name on Twitter. It’s too long.

Now, I can understand why my username on Twitter can’t be more than 15 characters. Usernames are added to outgoing messages, and they’re used within messages in retweets and so forth. You don’t want your entire 140-character limit on messages being taken up by a username. But what gets me is that real names on Twitter also have character limits. The restriction is raised to 20 characters (including spaces) to allow for people with longer names, but my name goes beyond even that. I’d imagine that many of Twitter’s female users might be known by two surnames as well. Plus, there are several nationalities with names that would easily test Twitter’s limits.

There’s a practical issue here — the ease of finding people in the Twitterverse. On Facebook, I can search for friends whether I use their married names, maiden names or even nicknames. On Twitter’s people search, which is notoriously problematic, I can be easily found with a query for “jenvalentino” or “Jennifer Valentino,” and that’s about it. If you search for anything involving “DeVries,” or even for “Jen Valentino,” you don’t find me, even though I list my full name in Twitter’s little “bio” section. It’s not that I think I have legions of fans who are dying to follow my anemic Twitter feed. But for a social-media service, this is a user-experience problem. Shouldn’t Twitter be facilitating my search for relevant people to follow?