Pretty Good Privacy

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Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a cryptographic program that combines privacy and authentication. It can be used to encrypt and sign emails.

Today PGP bases on the OpenPGP standard RFC4880. Various other programs implement this standard, too.

It was originally written by Phil Zimmermann in 1991, was free and open source software and thus found rapid distribution around the world. For that reason, Zimmermann almost was challenged in court: at that time, source code for cryptographic programs was considered munition within the definition of US export regulations. In subsequent years, these definitions were altered and it is now easier to comply with the regulations.