What to do with a Blowfish Key?

I just completed backing up 8 years of my Gmail using http://gmvault.org

I selected the --encrypt option which uses Blowfish encryption. According to their site:

Emails can be encrypted with the option -e --encrypt. With that option, the Blowfish encryption is used to crypt your emails and chats and the first time you activate it, a secret key is randomly generated and stored in $HOME/.gmvault/token.sec. Keep great care of the secret key as if you loose or delete it your stored emails won't be readable anymore !!!

I'm using OSX Lion. I'm a software engineer but far from an encryption expert.

What should I do with this key? It seems like leaving it where it is now (alongside the emails) sort of misses the point of encrypting them to begin with.

encryption

Encoderer

Posted 2012-09-06T02:16:48.037

Reputation: 133

Answers

Make three copies of it. Put one in your safe, one in your safety deposit box, and the other with someone you trust with your life.

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

Posted 2012-09-06T02:16:48.037

Reputation: 100 516

If you have lp premium consider at least 2x 2fa options like a hardware token i'm partial to yubikeys for my 2fa primary authbfor lp – linuxdev2013 – 2018-06-03T04:17:59.050

Since I don't have a safe, I'm thinking I'll keep it in a "Secure Note" in my LastPass vault. I use a pass phrase and 2-factor (Google Authenticator) protection on that. Thoughts? – Encoderer – 2012-09-06T03:31:04.027

Sounds fine, provided you can trust Google. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2012-09-06T05:12:29.460