-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf-mailsig(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org [mailto:owner-ietf-
mailsig(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Jim Fenton
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2004 10:19 AM
To: Dave Crocker
Cc: ietf-mailsig(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: Requiring no MIME support
"No changes" includes no visible effect on the body of the
message.
This is important to those who might have to field calls from
users/customers asking, "What's this extra junk in the message?"
-Jim
I agree strongly with this statement. It is what I was attempting to express in
my earlier message when I said that the security added by a MASS solution
should be transparent to non-supporting MTA's or MUA's. Just to make sure that
the context is clear, from the point of view of many senders this is much more
than an aesthetics issue and the issues are larger than having to deal with
customer support calls. Messages that have their formatting changed with text
that is meaningless to unknowledgeable end users, or worse have attachments of
types that people do not recognize and/or cannot decode are likely to make
messages appear less secure to those end users rather than more. This would be
a disincentive to rapid adoption.
This leads me to lean towards header encodng mechanisms, although I would be
open to other non-disruptive mechanisms if they exist.
Robert