Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: IAMWalrus on July 08, 2013, 03:54 pm
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What would be the purpose of this?
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So people can send you encrypted messages.
Back when you had a secret decoder ring, you used the same key to decode messages as you did to encode them. If you're thinking, well I need to be real careful who has access to my secret decoder ring, you would be right.
Any more, cryptographic schemes use two separate keys. One uses the public key to encode the message, and the private key to decode it. Your computer keeps your private key in a secret place and locks it down with a password, and hopefully you picked a strong password and encrypted your hard drive.
Think about it. You don't care who SENDS you a coded message; you only care who can READ them.
To give an example, the DEA could send you a message encrypted with your public key, saying "I'm gonna git you sucka." You could decode that and read it. You could then send them back a message encrypted with your public key, and they would never figure out in a hundred years you told them to fuck off, because they don't have your private key.
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Cool thanks. New to all this.