Public key

From Paperless Office

In a key pair, the public key is the one you share with everyone. Your public key can be used to encrypt messages. Once encrypted they can only be viewed using the private key. If you keep this private key say and do not share it then you are the only one who can decrypt a message that was encoded using your public key.

Public keys and their associated private keys share a unique property. Encrypting a document with one results in a document that can only be decrypted by the other. They both share this property and the property works both ways. One is labeled as a public key and the other as a private key simply to keep track of which ones should be used in a given transaction.

Public and private keys can be used to securely communicate. They can be used for e-mail encryption. They can be used to secure documents that must be sent to someone else. They can be used to verify the authenticity of a website and a number of different uses that involve encryption, or proving the identity of someone or something.