Re: [PLUG] Re: PLUG - The Happy Fun List!

[Jason <jason@nocks.com>]

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On Friday 04 October 2002 11H:35, Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
<snip>
>
> I am certainly among those who prefer not to receive HTML mail for the
> reasons mentioned, and also because so much of it is so tacky.  (Just
> because you can, doesn't mean you should.  Putting the Gimp or
> Photoshop on your computer doesn't make you and artist.)
>
> But, for some of the same reasons, I think PGP/GPG signatures are
> overused.  Yeah, I know the arguments for authentication, but is
> authentication necessary for most list mail?  Does it really matter who
> really wrote it?  Monitoring this list for a while, I have come to
> associate names with smart or stupid, nice or nasty, but all most of us
> really care about are the ideas themselves, not where they came from.

The problem here is that when the few occasions where the digital signatures 
really help do arise, if you haven't been using them, it's probably too late 
to be of much help. In addition to some important email people are waiting 
for, there's the issue of some pissed off individual posting email as someone 
else (similar to posting garbage on IRC as someone else) to try to hurt that 
person's reputation. Not saying this happens very often. But, as mentioned in 
a different thread by a few people, it's really easy to fake email addresses. 
But, you are probably all too well aware of that fact by now :)

So, for example, if I know that Ian signs just about all of the email that he 
sends out (and especially if I can verify his signature), I can safely ignore 
some irrational looking message that has a From: line indicating that it's 
from him when in fact it isn't. Without signing messages prior to that one, 
it would be much more difficult to know who had really been sending which 
messages. Again, haven't seen it in this forum, but if it can happen ...

So, I hope a small digital signature doesn't bother too many people.

>
> Of course, signatures are indispensabe for conducting business, but
> list mail?

Here, I'd probably agree with Mike's response. There's a lot to be said for 
getting into and sticking with good habits.

IMHO, encrypting messages might be more important for sensitive business 
messages.

If an email is not important to me, I probably just won't take the time to 
send it at all. If it's important enough to send, I'll more than likely 
attach my signature to it.

Just my $.02.

Cheers,
Jason
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