can't open pgp message...?

I highlight the encrypted message, click on his key in my PGP, paste, and hit decrypt and it says " Clipboard contained no valid encrypted data" help anyone?


Comments


[3 Points] 10Bird:

You can't decrypt a message encrypted with someone else's public key. They need to use your public key and a private key on your computer for you to decrypt their message. The vendors can decrypt a message that you have encrypted with their public key. Everyone would be able to decrypt if you were able to only with the public key...


[1 Points] CocaineNose:

probably just a formatting issue on your part. make sure it's lined up properly. Like a nice block of text.


[1 Points] None:

Is it possible you highlighted the "buyer's note" (The message you sent with your order) and they didn't send you a message? Not all vendors include a purchase message. Sometimes it can be confusing that you will see the message you sent as well as the one they sent you. If this is what happened you won't ever be able to see it with the key(s) you have access to.


[1 Points] Aluminum_Foil_Hat:

You can only decrypt a message that was encrypted with your public key. To do this you would need to select your key in the list and choose decrypt.


[1 Points] shlex:

This happened to me before. It turned out that I'd set the wrong key in my profile on one of the markets so the vendor wasn't encrypting with my public key. Took me ages to figure out.


[1 Points] howtospeak:

Sigh... If the info is encrypted with your public key then you must use your private key...


[1 Points] throwahooawayyfoe:

you encrypt things with the other guy's public key (the pgp key vendors list in their profile) and decrypt things with your private key (your password-protected key you created when you installed and ran your pgp tool for the first time). plain and simple, if a message was encrypted with somebody else's public key, you cannot decrypt it with your private key.

to decrypt a message that has been encrypted with your public key, copy/paste the entire block of encrypted text (including the header/footer that say 'BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED MESSAGE/END PGP ENCRYPTED MESSAGE') into your pgp tool's clipboard, then click the decrypt button. a prompt should then pop up asking your for the password you entered when you created your private key. once you've successfully entered that password, the message should decrypt and be viewable in plain text.


[1 Points] The_fire_bird:

Don't want to be condescending, and I always use gpg2 at the command line, so I could be wrong here, but here goes...

#1:

You say you've highlighted the message and clicked decrypt. Seriously, I really feel bad for asking this, but you did press ctrl c after highlighting the message didn't you?

The error message is suggesting the message hasn't been copied to the clipboard.

Highlight the message, then press ctrl c. Then open up another window / tab and press ctrl v. If something else is getting pasted then there's your problem.

#2:

If if's not that, another common mistake is not copying the

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----

-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

you need to copy that as well as the message. If you don't include that, gpg thinks you're trying to decrypt binary data (when in fact you're not) and so it will fail.

Oh, someone else posted the same thing 8 hours before me...