On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 01:03:56PM -0700, Bob Miller wrote: > Yeah, I can't think of very many scenarios where it benefits the > sender to send a signed, unencrypted message. The sender gets extra > liability from the nonrepudiability property, and not much benefit. > > One such scenario is where the recipient refuses to accept or act on > unsigned messages, but I haven't met anyone like that yet.
I've had people forge messages reputedly from me, in a time before viruses did this regularly. Worse, the person who did it used the same ISP, so it really did look like I wrote the messages. The messages were advertising warezed copies of all versions of windows, most of the best games of the era, and some other software which I happened to be a legitimate beta tester of at the time. Yeah, men did show up wearing suits that only government and corporate spooks would (I think there were some of each), and it was weeks before it all got straightened out. The letters from the company whose software I was testing were even more scary, given that I was under certain legal obligations by contract which made me financially liable for everything and anything. Eventually this was all linked to a cracked account at Teleport within a couple of days, and it became obvious that I was the target of a 15 year old who should have been turned over his mother's knee years earlier. There was never any proof as to who did it, but I've got a pretty good idea. I started signing everything after that and told people that if it was not signed, I didn't send it. The fact that I signed everything I wrote and that I could be completely anonymous if I chose to be Maybe 20% of the people I interacted with cared, but those who did gave me a reputation for integrity whose benefits I largely enjoy still. I stand by my words, and if I am wrong then so be it. This wasn't the last time someone claimed to be me in an email or anything, and there were other isolated incidents before the spammers started doing it on a large scale, but it was the last time anybody doubted my word when I said I didn't write the message in question. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
