Website, DB, & Software Developers

With a one-time pad, both parties (traditionally, "Alice" and "Bob&quot have to have the same key because the encipherment and decipherment processes are symmetrical. So, give them both the same pad (distributing this is the problem, because if you have a secure means of getting information from Alice to Bob already, why do they need cryptography?)

With PGP, Alice enciphers the message with Bob's public key, which only Bob's private key can decipher. Interestingly, once Alice has done this, she herself cannot decrypt the message.