At 12:56 PM -0700 8/5/02, Dan Wing wrote:
> At 8:49 PM +0200 8/4/02, Jacob Palme wrote:
>I am not a security expert and do not understand why.
>Possible causes could be:
>
>- Competing standards where unity is needed.
Not true for email. S/MIME has been built into most widely-used MUAs
for many years; almost no one uses it.
Not to be confused with PGP, the Other Standard. Which isn't built
into many MUAs but does have plugins for nearly all major MUAs.
If a user needs a plugin, it is not easily available.
And
is used by some people -- it's certainly easier to use with a group
of people than S/MIME.
Among groups of technically-savvy people, yes. Among typical users,
no. Pre-trusted roots are much simpler to use than webs of trust.
They are, of course, much less safe.
As an implementor, there isn't a simple choice of which to implement --
you have to implement both to cover cases of customers that prefer
one over the other.
So few users have any preference that this becomes moot.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium