Can I use aliases with mailbox Guard

Using Guard with aliases

The mailbox Guard is designed to work with your main mail address. Use in combination with aliases is not intended. However, there is a way to use aliases with Guard. The mailbox Guard uses only one active key pair for your account (the one marked as current). You can only generate a key pair for your main address with Guard and only upload a key if your main address is stored as the user ID (UID) in that key.

• If other Guard users send you an encrypted mail to one of your aliases, your stored active key will automatically be used to encrypt the mail.
• If you use an alias as the sender, then the mail can only be encrypted if the active key contains the sender address as a UID.

Creating a PGP key for an alias

It is possible to use your main address (e.g., for security reasons) only for login and an alias for encrypted mail communication. To generate the appropriate keys for the alias address, proceed as follows:

1. Open All settings | Mail addresses | Mail aliases and create the desired alias.
2. In the same menu, temporarily set this alias as the main address.
3. Go to the key management of the mailbox Guard and generate a key pair for this address – or upload an existing key pair for this alias.
   • Use the same Guard password to protect your private key as you did for the previous key.
   • Only after successful creation can you – if desired – delete the old key pair.
   • Warning: Mails and data encrypted with this old key can no longer be decrypted afterwards.
4. Return to alias management and set your original address as the main address again.

From now on, you can log in with your main mail address and send encrypted mails using the alias.

Using multiple addresses for encrypted sending

You can also send encrypted mails from multiple aliases. There are several ways to do this.

Encrypted sending for beginners

To send encrypted mails from multiple addresses (or aliases), assign a PGP key to each address. Follow the instructions above.

• Advantage: It is simple. You can create your keys without leaving the graphical interface of the web client.
• Disadvantage: Before sending an encrypted mail, you must make sure that the corresponding key is activated in the key management (under All settings | mailbox Guard security | Your PGP keys).

Encrypted sending for advanced users

You can either create a new key or import your Guard key for editing:

• Create a PGP key in your local OpenPGP environment (example with GnuPG and Linux):

gpg2 --expert --full-gen-key

Alternatively, you can download your Guard key pair and import it for editing:

gpg2 --import /path-to-your-key/file-name

Open this PGP key for editing:

gpg2 --key-edit <Key-ID-of-your-PGP-key>

Add a UID entry for each address and alias that you want to be able to use with this key.

Note: Using this method, you can also add your @secure.mailbox.org aliases.

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Then quit the key editing (quit) and export the key:

gpg2 --armor --export-secret-keys /path/keyfile.asc

Log in to your mailbox Office and open the key management. You can now import and activate the edited key.

From now on, you can send encrypted mails from all aliases for which you have created a corresponding UID entry in the key.