Patent ID: 7082536

Claim:
A computerized system for encrypting an electronic message between a sender and a recipient regardless of whether the sender or recipient are members of an encryption system comprising: a computer processor; a computer readable medium in communications with said computer processor; a communications link for communications between said computer readable medium, a sender's terminal and a recipients terminal; a set of non-member computer readable instructions contained within said computer readable medium, when processed by a computer processor and in response to a member sending an electronic message to a non-member recipient from said sender terminal: prompting the member for an encryption pass-phrase at said sender terminal, receiving an encryption pass-phrase from the member at said sender terminal, generating an encryption key pair stored within the computer readable medium not held the non-member recipient, encrypting the electronic message responsive to said encryption key pair so that said key pair may be used to decrypt said encrypted message, sending a notification to said recipient terminal that an encrypted message is available to the non-member recipient, encrypting said encryption key pair according to said encryption pass-phrase, prompting the non-member for a decryption pass-phrase corresponding to said encrypted message at said recipient, receiving said decryption pass-phrase from the non-member, decrypting said encrypted key pair in response to receiving a decryption pass-phrase corresponding to said encryption pass-phrase, decrypting said encrypted message according to said encryption key pair, and, providing the decrypted message for review to said non-member so that the non-member can receive and decrypt an electronic message from a member of an encryption system even though the non-member is not a member of the encryption system.