where to start?

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Wednesday 11 February 2009, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
> Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:
> > I run both Win xp and ubuntu 8.10. My wife runs win xp on her
> > laptop. We are at the point now where we both want to enable
> > encrypted emailing AND we want to find a nice way of educating
> > those we email to often, or with whom we exchange sensitive
> > information, in how to use gnupg to encrypt email back and forth.
> > Where should I start?
>
> You've already done it.  :)  Welcome to the community!  You'll find
> we're a pretty friendly bunch here.
>
> I would start by asking whether you want things to "just work" or
> whether you want to take a more direct hand in things.  The former
> will... well... just work.  The latter will require a lot more work,
> but I personally find it more rewarding.
>
> That choice is the first fork in the road.
>
> If you want to go down "just work," the best thing for you to do is
> use S/MIME, the Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.  If you
> want to go down "learn a lot and have control," then I would suggest
> OpenPGP.
>
> GnuPG supports both S/MIME and OpenPGP, so both are on-topic for this
> mailing list.  Let us know what you want, and we'll be in a much
> better position to offer you help.  :)

Out of curiosity: Is S/MIME a good solution in a heterogenous 
environment, i.e. different mail clients?

The German BSI performs extensive and expensive tests to ensure the 
compatibility of the different S/MIME implementations approved for 
usage by them. [1]


Regards,
Ingo

[1] 
http://www.it-grundschutzhandbuch.de/english/gshb/manual/s/s05110.htm
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