Android Privacy Guard (APG) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

app for the

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

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that provides strong, user-based

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...

which is compatible with the

Pretty Good Privacy Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partition ...

(PGP) and

GNU Privacy Guard GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a free-software replacement for Symantec's PGP cryptographic software suite. The software is compliant with RFC 4880, the IETF standards-track specification of OpenPGP. Modern versions of PGP are interoperable ...

(GPG) programs. This allows users to encrypt, decrypt, digitally sign, and verify signatures for

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s, and other files. The application allows the user to store the credentials of other users with whom they interact, and to encrypt files such that only a specified user can decrypt them. In the same manner, if a file is received from another user and its credentials are saved, the receiver can verify the authenticity of that file and decrypt it if necessary. The specific implementation in APG relies on the Spongy Castle APIs. APG has not been updated since March 2014 and is no longer under active development. The development has been picked up by

OpenKeychain OpenKeychain is a free and open-source mobile app for the Android operating system that provides strong, user-based encryption which is compatible with the OpenPGP standard. This allows users to encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify signatures for t ...

Reception

After its initial release in June 2010, it has gained a strong following with over 2000 reviews and over 100,000 installs from the Google Play store. Several tutorials have been written which instruct new users in how to set up APG on an Android phone. These tutorials generally reference APGs interaction with the

K-9 Mail K-9 Mail is free and open source email client for Android. It is designed as an alternative to the stock email clients included with the platform; it supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols and supports IMAP IDLE for real-time notifications. The p ...

Android e-mail client.

OpenKeychain

Between December 2010 and October 2013 no new version of APG was released. In the light of the

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this lack of development was viewed critically by the community. In September 2013 a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

of APG was released, version 2.1 of

. Some of the new features and improvements were subsequently merged back to APG. However, this process stopped in March 2014, while the OpenKeychain project continued to release new versions. As of February 2016 the development of OpenKeychain is more active than that of APG. Notable features of OpenKeychain include a modern user interface, support for

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and the YubiKey NEO.

References

{{Reflist

External links

GitHub repository

Software reviews and tutorials

Guardian Project: Lockdown your mobile email

Free and open-source Android software OpenPGP Cryptographic software