This page is where you will learn about the four main things you need to know about enMailing:
- Contacts
- Groups
- Guest Accounts
- Devices
Contacts
Contacts are people that you know and want to exchange encrypted messages with. The first tab on the Contacts page displays your current contacts, if you have any:
No, you can’t see the names of my contacts.
If you click the “Drop” button next to any contact, they will no longer be able to decrypt any messages that you encrypt, and you won’t be able to decrypt any messages they encrypt. Only drop a contact if you no longer want to exchange encrypted messages with them. The “Add Contact” tab is where you can add new contacts:
As it says, you need to know the exact username of the contact you wish to add. If you think this seems dumb because it makes it hard for you to discover new people to send messages with, tough. enMailing is not meant to be a social network. The idea is that you know and somewhat trust the people with which you will be exchanging encrypted messages. You’ll see why this is important when you get to groups below. Just get the enMailing username from whoever you want to add as a contact and adding them is a snap. If you’ve requested to add someone as a contact and they haven’t approved yet, they’ll be listed here until that user accepts your request. The “Incoming Requests” tab allows you to respond to connection request that others have sent you:
If you click “Accept” you will become connected with that user and will be able to exchange encrypted messages. If you click “Ignore/Hide” their connection request will disappear from your incoming requests. To spare their feelings, they will not be told that you rejected their request. As a third option, you can do nothing and leave their request hanging.
Groups
Groups, only available for premium members, are what allow you to manage the security of the encrypted messages you send to different contacts:
At the top, you have the option to create a new group. Just enter a unique name for the group and click “Add.” The encryption key will automatically be generated for that group and it will be added to the list. Notice that in the list of groups, the “Everyone” group does not give you the option to manage or delete it. This is because everyone one of your contacts is automatically added to the Everyone group. If you encrypt a message for the Everyone group, all of your contacts will be able to decrypt it. You cannot delete the Everyone group.
The “Famous People” and “Friends” groups shown in this example are user-created, and therefore can be managed and deleted. If you delete a group, you will forever lose the ability to decrypt any messages that you encrypted for that group. Be warned. You might notice that the “Famous People” group does not have a “New Key” button whereas the other two groups do. The “New Key” button generates a new encryption key for that group. This new key will be used to encrypt all future messages for that group. However, you can only generate a new key for a group once every seven days. At the time the above picture was taken, it had been less that seven days since the previous key for the “Famous People” group was issued. That’s why there is no option to generate a new key.
To rename a group, or manage the contacts that are in a group, click the “Manage” button:
If you want to rename the group, just type a new group name in the box next to “Rename Group” and click “Update.” To add or remove contacts from a group, just click the Add or Remove buttons next to each contact. Contacts highlighted in green are members of the group. Contacts highlighted in red are not.
Once you add a contact to a group, that user will be able to decrypt all messages that you’ve encrypted for that group, even messages encrypted before you added them to the group.
Devices
Devices are web browsers, email clients, and mobile devices that you have authorized to use enMailing:
The “Device Name” is the name of the device that you gave when you initially authenticated the device. You can edit device names here by clicking the “Edit” button. The “Device Type” column shows the type of device, which can be helpful if you don’t give you devices very descriptive names. The “Authorization Date” lets you know when you initially authorized the device. If you no longer want a device to be able to encrypt and decrypt messages, just click the “Revoke” button next to that device. Simple as that.
That’s pretty much it for the basics! To learn how to use enMailing on various devices, check out the guides.