Encouraging email security.

[John Clizbe]

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Daniel Carrera wrote:

>
> On this note, what can we do about hotmail users?
> AFAIK hotmail doesn't offer POP3 or IMAP.  Suppose, for the sake of
> argument, that a hotmail user becomes interested in using GPG.  Is there
> any way for the he or she to start using GPG with their hotmail address?
>
Oh dear, Hotmail. I can see this scenario unfolding...
Encryption/Signing starts to catch on with "The Masses". MicroSoft in
their usual style of "innovation" writes a check and buys PGP Corp. The
"technology" is then "Bolted-onto"  Hotmail and offered to HotMail users
as _Secure_HotMail"®_ for $9.95/yr. Secure Hotmail will also offer
"Secure Certificate Storage"®" so that you may access your private key
and commonly-used encryption keys from anywhere on the Web, just by
signing-in to your SecurePassPort"® account...

The mind reels from the possibilities. On a more serious note, would YOU
feel secure communicating on a platform 'engineered and secured' by
Microsoft?

Oh yes, and then to /further/ "innovate", Microsoft proposes a series of
proprietary enhancements to fork and subvert the OpenPGP standard. The
GPG-devel community, working on providing a compatibility-mode, is
threatened with persecution under the reverse-engineering clauses of the
DMCA.

Still I have to wonder if SecureYahoo! would be any better.

For the time being, a Win32 user could install either the canonical or
Nullify builds of GPG along with one of the GUI frontends for Win32
(WinPT or GPGshell); or the freeware or licensed PGP 8.02. And then
encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify using the clipboard and "current window"
mechanisms.   The headache with this approach is that it is still
nonportable -- you're tied to your main PC -- unless that's a laptop
that travels with you all the time.
- --
John P. Clizbe                     Inet:   JPClizbe at attbi dot com
Golden Bear Networks               PGP/GPG KeyID: 0x608D2A10
  "Most men take the straight and narrow. A few take the road less
traveled.  I chose to cut through the woods."

9:00PM Tonight on _REAL_IRONY_:  Vegetarian Man Eaten by Cannibals
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