Courtesy of Slashdot, I’ve discovered a tool called GPG4Browsers that allows you to send digitally signed and/or encrypted emails from Gmail’s web interface. Digital signatures are the web’s equivalent of handwritten signatures. They allow you to verify that emails are coming from the person they say they’re coming from, which among other things, makes it a lot easier to weed out spam. (Spammers rely on the fact that the emails they send can’t be traced back to them.) The more people are aware of this technology and use it, the better.

GPG4Browsers is only available for Google Chrome (or Chromium) right now, and it’s a little rough around the edges (it doesn’t generate private keys, for example; you need another program to do that for you), but I fully expect both of those problems to be resolved in time. On the bright side, since the tool is implemented in Javascript, your private key stays on your computer. If you use Chrome, give it a try!