Thanks again for further insights!. Marta On Jul 7, 2004, at 14:56, Lee Larson wrote:
> On Jul 7, 2004, at 2:19 PM, Marta Edie wrote: > >> What is "if you like" ? I thought Lee told me to delete them. They >> kept multiplying, so i took a good look at the long line of what I >> considered duplicates and did a "delete" job. > > I don't think I meant you should delete them, only that there's no > harm in deleting them. Here's what they are. > > The idea behind public key encryption is that every user is issued two > keys: a public key and a private key. The public key is distributed > for everyone to read. The private key is kept secret. > > When you receive a signed message, it contains a digital signature > that's derived from the content of the message and the private key of > the sender. Using the public key of the sender and some tricky > mathematics, the signature can be verified as having been generated > using the sender's private key. It also verifies that the content of > the message has not been changed. (But, the private key cannot be > determined in the process.) > > What you are seeing in your keychain are the public keys of the > senders. Your mail program gets them from the company that issued the > keys. In this case, that's Thawte, based in South Africa. > > Here's another way to think of it. Users are given two keys because > anything locked with one of the keys can only be unlocked with the > other. One of the keys is kept secret and the other is made public. A > message locked with your public key can only be unlocked with your > private key and a message locked with your private key can only be > unlocked with your public key. > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be July 27. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> > | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup> > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be July 27. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
