Ed Gerck wrote: > Ben Laurie wrote: >> Ed Gerck wrote: >>> This IS one of the sticky points ;-) If postal mail would work this way, >>> you'd have to ask me to send you an envelope before you can send me >>> mail. >>> This is counter-intuitive to users. >> >> We have keyservers for this (my chosen technology was PGP). If you liken >> their use to looking up an address in an address book, this isn't hard >> for users to grasp. > > Well, the observation (as I hear the NPR piece) is that it HAS been hard > to grasp. > > Further, the comparison with "looking up an address in an address book" is > also not even close to the level of hassle that users need to go through > with > PGP (and PKI). Please google "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt: A Usability > Evaluation > of PGP 5.0" and comments in the Usability section of > <http://email-security.net/papers/pki-pgp-ibe.htm/>
I don't use PGP - for email encryption I use enigmail, and getting missing keys is as hard as pressing the "get missing keys" button. >>> Your next questions could well be how do you know my key is really >>> mine... >>> how do you know it was not revoked ...all of which are additional sticky >>> points. >> >> For revocation, keyservers again. > > Last time I looked, a lot of PGP keys in keyservers are useless because > users > (most often) simply forgot their passphrase... I guess I don't send people like that much encrypted email. >> If I cared whether it was really yours >> (I don't), then I'd check the signatures, or verify the fingerprint >> out-of-band. > > Out-of-band is good. But, again, the hassle factor... Most of my encryption is done simply because its a good thing to do. If the wrong guy is reading it I'll find out in the end. For the few where I really care I'm prepared to go through that hassle. >>> In the postal mail world, how'd you know the envelope is really from >>> me or >>> that it is secure? >> >> I don't. > > Yes, but since you don't need to ask for one... no problem. You just use > your > own envelope to send postal mail to me. Really? I just write "Ed Gerck" on an envelope and it gets to you? I doubt it. Presumably I have to do all sorts of hard and user-unfriendly things to find out and verify your address. > The PKI problem is that it runs > backwards > to normal mail flow -- you need to ask me for my envelope before you can > send me a > secure message. IBE doesn't have this problem, even though it has key > escrow. If you handled your keys properly I would not need to ask you for anything. -- http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html http://www.links.org/ "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
