>As I mentioned earlier, it's also an act of politeness to have a PGP key >available so that others can send encrypted messages to you when _they_ >feel it is sensitive, even if _you_ think security is silly.
i can't think of any time in my life when i've had to have someone *explicitly* send me something encrypted/authenticated. in my personal experience, passwords are shared over the phone (ooh - now that's secure ;-) or in person - not written down or sent via email. as far as authentication goes - i dont think anyone cares about me enough to try and impersonate me, and i dont think anyone cares enough about anyone who sends me email to impersonate them. again, just my opinion - but i think it's all kinda silly. technically interesting? sure. fun? maybe. important? probably not. though the *principles* behind pgp are super important!! but i think any *explicit* encryption or authentication is more of a hobbyist kind of thing. it won't be widely used unless it becomes transparent (implicit). just my $.02 Josh Coates http://www.jcoates.org -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Andrew McNabb Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 11:28 AM To: BYU Unix Users Group Subject: Re: [uug] PGP and Thursday Meeting On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 10:02:55AM -0700, Stuart Jansen wrote: > Admittedly, I don't use it daily, but there've been a handful of times > that it has been very nice to know only the intended recipient of a > message would be able to read it. For example, when sharing a password > with a fellow admin of a remote machine. There've been many more times > when I've tried to find a secure way of sharing information and not > been able to. Good MUA's make using GPG a snap, and by using it daily > I don't have to worry about only discovering a problem when I need it > work perfectly. I almost always sign messages I write, but I only send an encrypted message about once a month. Though encryption is not a frequent event, sometimes it's pretty important, like Stuart's example of sending passwords. If you don't use PGP, every once in a while a situation will arise in which you need security, and because you don't have any security in place, you'll probably sacrifice it for simplicity. As I mentioned earlier, it's also an act of politeness to have a PGP key available so that others can send encrypted messages to you when _they_ feel it is sensitive, even if _you_ think security is silly. -- Andrew McNabb http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/ PGP Fingerprint: 8A17 B57C 6879 1863 DE55 8012 AB4D 6098 8826 6868 -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
