"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

Most people will use Confidant Mail to avoid casual snooping and mass surveillance. However, some people do have serious and powerful enemies, and they need to take additional precautions. Reporters and activists in non-free countries, candidates for political office, and corporate executives are obvious examples of people who need to be paranoid.

Can [name some secret organization] break Confidant Mail's encryption?

Confidant Mail's security comes from GNU Privacy Guard, the standard open-source implementation of PGP. All the cryptography is done by the external GPG process, while Confidant Mail just acts as a user interface and network transport. So the real question is, can GPG be broken?

The answer is, not as far as the public knows. If it can be broken, it's probably costly to do. Using GPG on a PC is like putting a bank vault door on your house. Someone who wants in is probably going to go through the window or the wall or the roof, rather than attacking the front door. Here I will list some of the ways you can be compromised without breaking the cipher, and suggest precautions you can take.