Importing other people’s email certificates in Thunderbird

Other people’s certificates are downloaded in the form of a so-called public key. This will enable you to encrypt messages sent to people whose public certificates you hold.

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird, then access the settings by clicking the icon with three horizontal lines located below the close button, and select “Account settings”.

2. Go to the “End-to-end encryption” tab, then select “Manage S/MIME certificates”.

3. Open the “People” section, then click “Import”.

4. Select the downloaded certificate file (with the extension “*.pem” or “*.p7b”) and click the “Open” button. If you do not yet have such a file, download it as described in the guide: Downloading other people’s public certificates.

The public keys have been added to your email programme. You can now send encrypted messages. See the guide for details: Encrypting email in Thunderbird.