Re: authenticated email

Thus spake "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <harald(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no>
> I thought I'd try this....
>
> is there any particular disadvantage or centralization of power
> implied in me signing this message with my PGP key?
>
> If not, is there any particular reason that I shouldn't do this all the
> time?
>
> It's not a solution, but is there a downside?
Yes.  Automated responders, such as Majordomo, don't understand MIME at all,
and therefore all the nasty MIME markup confuses them.  The problem gets
even uglier when you send MIME to trouble ticket systems.

On top of this, you have a great divide between PGP and S/MIME, with many
clients supporting either one or the other.  For instance, my client sees
PGP-signed email as a blank message with the original body as a text
attachment -- PGP-only clients have similar problems with S/MIME.

If I didn't worry about such problems, I'd have my client automatically sign
all outgoing email.  Of course, I'm not sure whether I'd do it with PGP or
S/MIME...

S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature