What it is, what it's for, and why you'd use it
“Pretty Good Privacy” (PGP) is a scheme used to encrypt or sign messages. There are other schemes for the same thing, but this one is freely available for various different types of computer systems. It works by using secret and public key pairs, you pass out your public key and keep your secret key, and so does anyone else that you communicate with (they pass out their public keys, and keep their private keys). All the keys, in combination, are used to encrypt messages (your own private keys, and each other's public keys), and all of them are required to decrypt them (you send a message encrypted with your private key and their public key, and they decrypt it with your public key and their private key). This way, no outsider can decrypt the material (because they don't have anybody's private keys).
jk
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