On Fri, 7 May 2004 20:34:04 +0100 Julian Allason wrote:
>Actually that would be an extremely effective way of drawing
>attention to your new subversive status, Chris! All encrypted email
>is reported to be routinely subjected to cracking by the N S A
>whereas 'en clair' (unencrypted) text is merely sampled! PGP is
>called that because the privacy afforded is 'pretty' rather than
>'very' good. Thus posing little challenge to governments.
Ha! It's doubtful that Chris is going to be noticed amongst the
large number of people (on the order of millions) who already use
PGP worldwide!
While "there can be no absolute security guarantees in practical
cryptographic implementations," there are very good reasons to
believe that PGP is much more secure than you claim. Following the
advice in the comp.security.pgp FAQ I should ask you exactly who is
the source of your "reported" information?
Your explanation about the naming of PGP is "pretty good" for
amusement value but, alas, completely inaccurate :-/ Oh, and it's not
just governments that I don't want reading my emails without
permission: there's also my family, colleagues, visitors, employers,
employees, service and trades people, ISP sysadmins, et cetera. How
much of a challenge does PGP provide to them, do you think?
ObEmailer: PGP works very nicely with Emailer. I use 6.5.1 which puts
little PGP encryption/decryption/etc. buttons in the top
right of the message window. Even my Mum thinks it's easy
to use!
ObThunderbird: Mozilla Thunderbird supports the OpenPGP standard too!
Mr. Noyb.
Appendix
There is a lot of really good, accurate information about
PGP freely available. For example:
An Introduction to Cryptography
<http://www.pgpi.org/doc/guide/6.5/en/intro/> (PDF)
The comp.security.pgp FAQ
<http://www.de.pgp.net/pgp-faq/>
How Secure is PGP?
<http://www.privacy.com.au/pgpsec.htm>
Phil Zimmermann's Essays on PGP are worth reading, particularly:
Why I Wrote PGP
<http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html>
Beware of Snake Oil
<http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/SnakeOil.html>
Frequently Asked Question
<http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/faq/index.html>
BTW, PGP is available for MacOS 9 and Mac OS X via the International
PGP Homepage <http://www.pgpi.org/>.
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