Viewing secure messages with Confidencial
So you’ve received a message protected with Confidencial…now what? This tutorial walks you through how to view the message. Let’s pretend your coworker, Alice, has sent a message (a password) to you, Bob, who has never used Confidencial before.
See Sending secure messages with Confidencial for a tutorial on the steps Alice took to send you this message
- Along with the protected message from Alice, you will also receive an invitation email to join Confidencial. Click on the button in that email to create your Confidencial account.
- After you click the registration link, enter a password and click Continue to create a dedicated Confidencial account or click Continue with Google or Continue with Microsoft to create an account based on an existing Google or Microsoft account, respectively
- If prompted, provide consent to Confidencial to access certain information from your Google or Microsoft account. Confidencial requires information such as your email address and name to allow other users to find you and encrypt information for you.
- Since this is your first time logging in, click Generate Keys. Confidencial creates your public and private encryption keys at this time. On subsequent logins, the keys you generated will be loaded automatically.
The private encryption key created during this step is generated on your local machine. The key is then split into multiple parts, with each part stored in a different location. Your private key exists in assembled (un-split) form only on the machine on which you use Confidencial. Confidencial does not store your private key in assembled form on its servers.
- You are now taken to Confidencial’s web app, where you are able to protect and view messages
- Copy the Confidencial protected message you received from your messaging tool onto your clipboard. In this example, we use Slack.
Since this message from Alice was protected before you created an account and generated split keys, this message was protected with a temporary key. All messages protected for you from this point forward are protected with the more secure split keys.
- Go back to your web browser and paste the protected message into the input box on the Encryption Tools page
Be sure to include the “BEGIN CONFIDENCIAL ENCRYPTED MESSAGE” and “END CONFIDENCIAL ENCRYPTED MESSAGE” parts of the protected message when pasting into the input box.
- Click Decrypt
- You can now view the protected message and copy it into other programs
This is how you view protected messages with Confidencial. See Sending secure messages with Confidencial for how to send them.