PGP/MIME use (was Re: META)

Jean-David Beyer jeandavid8 at verizon.net
Tue Jan 31 20:02:07 CET 2012


Jerry wrote:

> I totally agree. I have never seen or heard any logical excuse for the
> signing of list traffic. 

I almost never sign anything unless I suspect the destination can at
least ignore the signature. The people with whom I send e-mail (a
diminishing population because most have moved to texting on cell
phones, or twitter or Facebook) have no interest in security, though
they sometimes act in a paranoid fashion about eavesdropping. But they
refuse to do anything about it. They cannot deal with MIME signatures
(at least those still using AOL), and cannot ignore them either.
They hate the inline signatures too. When I do sign, it is just to draw
attention to the fact I have a public key and can accept signed and
encrypted e-mail. And so far, other than complaints about extraneous
text in my emails, that is about it. I really get no use from it.

So signing to this list, and an occasional test that my stuff is still
working is the only use I get from gnupg and enigmail. The stuff I would
really prefer to send encrypted I cannot send that way because those to
whom I would send it could not read it (they have no software and no
public keys). And if they could, they would probably save it in clear
text somewhere, forward it, or whatnot.

I think PGP and gnupg are really great ideas, whose time has not yet
come. And by the time people realize its usefulness, the snooping
community will have made it impossible to use it anymore. People sending
encrypted e-mail will be disappeared. The time for that has not yet
come. I hope it is postponed until after I can no longer use a computer.

-- 
  .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
  /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A         Registered Machine   241939.
 /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://counter.li.org
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