These days, PGP is effectively useless for interoperable email. If you have not prearranged with the recipient, you can't exchange encrypted mail. And even if you have, one or the other of you will probably have to change your software, which will produce other ripple effects if you are trying to talk to TWO different people or groups using encrypted email.
PGP compatibility problems started with Phil Zimmermann's deliberate decision to eliminate compatibility with RSA keys. Once that problem existed, disabling communication with anyone who used PGP before late 1997, nobody else seemed to mind introducing all sorts of lesser incompatibilities, including many mere bugs. Having wrestled with these problems for years, my guess is that we need to abandon PGP and spec something else, probably in the IETF. (Perhaps we might be able to shortcut that process if the OpenPGP standards effort actually produces many compatible implementations including NAI's, and/or if NAI falls apart and every other implementation meets the IETF specs.) Note, however, that there are many things that OpenPGP doesn't do, making encrypted email still a pretty sophisticated thing to do. Brad Templeton has been kicking around some ideas on how to make zero-UI encryption work (with some small UI available for us experts who care more about our privacy than the average joe). http://www.templetons.com/brad/crypt.html John --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]