How can external recipients read an encrypted email?

You can also send encrypted emails to external recipients who are no groupware users. When adding an external recipient, Guard checks whether a public key is available for this email address. Depending on the result, Guard uses different procedures for sending the encrypted email:
  • If there is a public key for the recipient:
  • The message will be sent encrypted using this key. The recipient can read the message with his/her private key.
  • If there is no public key for the recipient:
  • If the external user already has a guest account, he/she will receive an email with the link to the login page of his/her guest account. When having logged in, he/she can read the encrypted email on the guest page. He/she can send an encrypted reply from this page.
  • If there is no guest account, a guest account will be created. The external recipient will receive an email with a link to a guest page and an automatically created password. The user logs in to the guest page. Then he/she can create an own password.Depending on the configuration, the automatically created password and the link to the guest page will be sent in separate emails.
  • Depending on the configuration, guest account emails will be deleted from the server after a specific number of days.The external recipient can send an encrypted reply to the encrypted email. It is not possible to add additional recipients though.
Related topics:
  •  Reading encrypted emails⁠  Sending encrypted emails⁠