Pros and cons of PGP/MIME for outgoing e-mail?

[Greg Sabino Mullane]

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Bjarni Runar Einarsson wrote:

> Of course, today encryption is so rare that the only folks encountering
> this problem are nontechnical people, journalists and activists and the
> like, and they just give up and us something else to communicate and we
> don't hear from them again.

This is not true. I am an active user of PGP for encryption and signing, 
and hear from technical *and* non-technical people all the time about 
issues with reading or verifying or decrypting my emails.

I use both plaintext and MIME as the situation dictates, but there are 
major problems with both, so +1 on trying to think outside the box.

> 1) Are these problems as common as my experiences imply, or am I just
> really unlucky?

Bad mail client support for PGP is still very common. This only 
compounds the mental hurdles users need to understand things.

> 2) Is there any interest in trying to improve the standards?

The cynic in me will point out that we already have problems 
getting email clients to follow the existing standards, but 
improvement is always welcome. :)

- -- 
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 201411241217
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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