Digitale Gesellschaft — E-Mail-Verschlüsselung für Anfänger
Summary
A German-language beginner’s primer on encrypted email by the Swiss civil-society association Digitale Gesellschaft, covering the choice between provider-side encryption (e.g. Proton Mail, Tutanota) and end-to-end PGP/GPG, with concrete set-up guidance for non-technical readers.
Body
https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/
The guide begins where most activists stall: with the choice between a hosted encrypted-email service and self-managed PGP/GPG. [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto] It argues that for most activists a reputable provider-side encrypted service (Proton Mail, Tutanota) gives 80% of the security benefit at 5% of the operational cost, and reserves PGP/GPG for the threat model that genuinely needs it (a high-risk defender who is targeted by state-level adversaries and who can absorb the key-management cost). [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto] This trade-off framing is unusual in the encrypted-email literature, which tends either to insist on PGP or to ignore it; the Digitale Gesellschaft primer names the trade-off explicitly. [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto]
For users who do proceed to PGP, the guide walks through key generation with a reputable client (Thunderbird + Enigmail or, in the current edition, Thunderbird’s built-in OpenPGP), key publication to a keyserver, signing and verification of incoming messages, and the recovery-question (what happens to my encrypted email if I lose my device). [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto] Each step is paired with a short rationale — why OpenPGP, why a long key, why publish a public key at all — so a reader can adapt the recipe rather than copying it. [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto]
The guide is published by Digitale Gesellschaft, a Swiss civil-society association known for its policy advocacy on data protection and for being independent of the encrypted-email providers it recommends. [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto] This independence matters because the encrypted-email ecosystem includes both vendors and watchdogs; the guide’s choice of recommendation cannot be confused with a vendor pitch. [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto] It is updated as the provider landscape changes; the current edition accounts for Proton Mail’s post-2023 protocol updates and for the Tutanota-to-Tuta rebrand. [source: digitale-gesellschaft-email-krypto]
Use it for
A German-language email-encryption primer; a recommendation source for a campaign that does not yet have a position on PGP versus provider-side encryption; a teaching text for a one-hour email-encryption workshop.