The club has been able to accept payments by credit card for many years – usually by post or by telephone. We’ve considered various methods of electronic payment and for now, the costs due to commission, potential fraud and the extra administration outweigh the potential benefits. Sending your credit card details via email can be less than secure but now Graham G3MFJ (for club sales) and Tony G4WIF (membership subs) are able to receive PGP encrypted emails.

When you have installed PGP you will need the public keys for either Tony G4WIF (for membership payments) or Graham G3MFJ (Club sales). Both keys are contained in this zipped file along with a text file which we would ask you to fill in and then encrypt using PGP. You can always send us a test email first.

We regret that we are unable to help you install the necessary software but you can visit www.pgpi.org for more information including suggestions where the program can be downloaded from including the company "PGP" who have a free version. Also consider the public domain version.

So what is PGP? - "PGP is a program that gives your electronic mail something that it otherwise doesn't have: Privacy. It does this by encrypting your mail so that nobody but the intended person can read it. When encrypted, the message looks like a meaningless jumble of random characters. PGP has proven itself quite capable of resisting even the most sophisticated forms of analysis aimed at reading the encrypted text." - this text was taken from the FAQ page at www.uk.pgp.net where more helpful information can be found.

The GQRP club leave it for you to judge whether using PGP is right for you or the degree of security it provides. We hope you will use the above links to decide this for yourself. A fascinating book which describes encryption technology such as PGP can be found on this Amazon link.