It could even be disastrous. This output can be encrypted and sent to a receiver who has similar encryption software. This procedure is cumbersome but highly effective where security is paramount. The best such program is Philip Zimmermann's PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. It is widely available from FTP sites throughout the Internet - although its use is banned in some countries such as France.
All versions work the same.
This public key can be freely distributed by a data receiver to enable people to encrypt messages intended to be sent to that receiver. To read messages encrypted with a public key, the receiver must use his or her private key. So it is important to keep your private key secret because anyone with your private key can decode messages sent which have been encoded using your public key. A PGP key is a series of alphanumeric characters up to 128 bytes long, created for you by the PGP program. The result will be a new, encoded file with the .asc suffix, ready to be e-mailed.