PGP/MIME (Was: One alternative to SMTP for email: Confidant Mail)

Doug Barton dougb at dougbarton.email
Wed Mar 25 21:32:45 CET 2015


On 3/25/15 1:20 PM, Ville Määttä wrote:
> On 25.03.15 21:41, Doug Barton wrote:
>> While this is strictly anecdotal evidence I would argue that it's a good
>> indication that we may not be ready for PGP/MIME as the default.
>
> I think that fail, a signature.asc attachment, is still a "cleaner fail"
> than a non-PGP receiver getting a breakdown from inline PGP. And that is
> for every single email.

How are you using the term "breakdown" here? If their client isn't doing 
PGP they see some extraneous text, and a signature block. While I agree 
that for those not using PGP that is clutter, I am not sure what you 
mean by "breakdown."

> I have not received a single question from anyone regarding my PGP/MIME
> signed emails. Not one. And I'm talking about the ones that don't use
> PGP / have no clue what PGP is.

We've already established that PGP/MIME is a "cleaner" solution for 
those that don't use PGP. I'm not debating that point, and I don't think 
anyone else is either.

The question at hand is for those that *do* use PGP, which is more 
effective? TMK there are no mail clients that fail to process a valid 
in-line signature, but obviously there are still clients that cannot 
correctly handle PGP/MIME.

>> FWIW, I have received various other messages privately from people who have said the same thing ... They can see the attachment, but either message verification fails, or there is no indication on their side that it is a PGP-signed message at all.
>
> In this one I can see your email with the attachment, but also marked
> with a "good signature".

Thank you for confirming, but we're both using Enigmail so I would 
suspect that would be the case. :)  Also, I can see the valid signatures 
on the message that I receive from the list. I'm glad to see that the 
old Mailman bug has been fixed in that regard.

Doug

-- 
I am conducting an experiment in the efficacy of PGP/MIME signatures. 
This message should be signed. If it is not, or the signature does not 
validate, please let me know how you received this message (direct, or 
to a list) and the mail software you use. Thanks!

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