I am so tired of crypto experts criticizing PGP without suggesting an alternative. So much has been written, so many soapboxes have been climbed on, and yet there seems to be no good replacement.

I deeply respect Philip Zimmermann for creating "pretty good privacy" rather than trying for "perfect privacy". PGP is exactly that: pretty good. Not great, not perfect, but pretty good indeed. And it's there. And it works. It's a compromise, which works well for many people's requirements. Oh, and did I mention that it EXISTS?

I use PGP every day. My private keys are stored on Yubikeys, which is supported. I have offline backups of those, which is supported, too. I can encrypt my backups for multiple keys, sign lists of hashes of files to verify integrity, and people can send me private E-mail.

None of this works perfectly, but it does work, and (not being a teenager anymore) I appreciate the fact that PGP has worked since 1991 or so, and I can reasonably expect it to work for the rest of my lifetime, unlike much modern software, which while being incredibly fashionable, seems to flare out a couple of years later.