[ale] PGP/GPG Keysigning party! ALE Central November 19th.

[Jim Kinney]

EXCELLENT!! To add one more: just by signing a plain text email with a
key adds validity that that email really was sent sent by the person
claimed and not spoofed by s[pc]ammers. ( see:
http://ejohn.org/blog/google-groups-is-dead/ for spammer proliferation
and mailing lists).

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Katherine Villyard <villyard at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> This, right here, is why I can't get anyone I know to use GPG.
>
> This email traveled various routers plain text to reach your inbox.  To
> which everyone I know says, "So?  I don't care if George W. Bush/Barack
> Obama/the CIA/the NSA/the Russian Mafia reads my email."  And for this
> particular email, which is going to end up in ALE's public archives, so
> what?
>
> However.  If you ARE going to send something secret--like, say, financial
> junk, or your ISP emailing you passwords--that means that the only mail in
> your inbox that's encrypted is the mail you don't want people to read.  Way
> to be stealthy.
>
> No, the way to be stealthy is to encrypt by default.  Then people don't know
> which message is the super secret message, and waste time decrypting
> pictures of your cats and your wife asking you to bring home milk looking
> for the message with the secret stuff in it.  And, you know.  Maybe I don't
> WANT my emails to my honey flying around plain text, only he refuses to
> encrypt.  Then again, he didn't want to use SSL for his pop/imap until I
> opened wireshark and showed him his passwords, so there you go.
>
> As for the keysigning party, there's no guarantee that the key in the
> keyserver is who it says it is.  Considering that I can't get my friends to
> use encryption at all, it's unlikely that people are impersonating them,
> but...
>
> Katherine
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness