-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 21 March 2003 9:52 pm, Mitch Thompson wrote:
<some snippage>
The more people who use privacy, authenticity procedures, the more dificult it becomes to restrict these rights.
Which was one of the main reasons I began using PGP/gpg on a regular basis. My belief is it should be universal. ...
Here is another bit to ponder: when secure signing does indeed become universal, spam will stop. Drastic claim, I know, but think it through: 1) people can set a rule: if not signed, discard spammers are unlikely to sign their messages -- they thrive on anonymity (*) 2) if signed, check "web of trust" -- does anybody know this guy? 2a) no: discard 2b) yes, but through some "rather shady links": discard in the unlilkey event they DO decide to sign a message, it will "just be a signature" out there -- nobody will claim to know the person (because if they did, you would be able to trace it to the originator) Even if a spammer decides to "fool the system" and uses a legitimate key to sign the "spam" key, that "legitimate" key will quickly lose the "trust" of anyone using it as part of their "web of trust" [remember, one of the "trust" settings is, "I do NOT trust this person at all", which is a polite way of saying, "this guy is an idiot and will sign anything without checking, or worse, purposely sign things that are questionable"] (*) yes, I know that some people have a desire to remain anonymous "on the internet", but that doesn't work very well for e-mail conversations -- newsgroup/mailing list boards like this, however, are an exception, and if the need is great enough, someone will come up with an e-mail reflector that will anonymize members in a trusted way [i.e., anonymous to all save the list owner...] - -- Yet another Blog: http://osnut.homelinux.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: http://osnut.homelinux.net/TomEmerson.asc iD8DBQE+fACPV/YHUqq2SwsRAjUNAJ4o7VKdMx01E/0Rj+g6cFr6UHG3DACgogNR P5zzz1VBJz+FK8n5jtT3+xc= =VyVb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----