4 ms·
Why not S/MIME? Most clients support it, its stupid easy, and has had a lot of eyes on it considering its age. Constantly re-inventing email encryption seems t
by drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Why not S/MIME? Most clients support it, its stupid easy, and has had a lot of eyes on it considering its age.
Constantly re-inventing email encryption seems to be the problem here. None of them really make this stuff any better. Key distribution is still going to be PITA, but sticking with a supported standard makes the most sense.
- drdaeman 10y agoNo one seem to want to touch anything that already exists. Never heard of anyone thinking of redesigning UI/UX for a typical MUA or browser's keystore (throwing in BTBV option or whatever), although I still believe that must be possible. Everyone's off with their own proprietary non-interoperable (occasionally, "open") standards. Also, _almost_ no client supports _any_ form of authentication and encryption on mobile, be it OpenPGP, S/MIME, PEP, SaltPack or whatever else. There are few, but that's not even remotely close to "most". Neither there is much choice of good desktop client software as well.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoiPhone supports S/MIME out of the box. Android has 3rd party mail clients that do. Several desktop clients do, including Outlook. Its not as dire as you make it to be. People just dont want the hassle and don't value their email privacy. Once they do value this, which they should considering all the breaches of late, then it'll catch on. I work with companies that have S/MIME internally for just this reason. Its completely feasible.
- noinsight 10y ago> authentication and encryption on mobile The iOS built-in Mail application supports S/MIME. However, it doesn't support anything above TLS 1.0 for IMAP, curiously. K-9 and the Android mail client don't support S/MIME, however. On the desktop, Thunderbird and Outlook support S/MIME. So does mutt.