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> You appear to be ignoring PGP / GPG; SSL, etc, which are used by many people. PGP / GPG is a joke in terms of usability - no average Joe uses it. Even my tec
by jerguismi 13y ago
> You appear to be ignoring PGP / GPG; SSL, etc, which are used by many people.
PGP / GPG is a joke in terms of usability - no average Joe uses it. Even my techy friends find it too complicated to use. I myself prefer signing messages with bitcoin addresses instead of GPG, jsut because it is so much simpler.
SSL works, that's true.
- tptacek 13y agoPGP is widely used enough that the GPGMail team keeps up with Apple Mail.app development; Apple breaks Mail.app compatibility with every release. PGP is also a standard tool in my field; we use it every day. I suspect that most of the people who say PGP is too hard to use simply don't encrypt messages that often (or, when they first learned PGP, weren't routinely encrypting messages). They're complaining in essence that PGP isn't automatic and frictionless.
- ams6110 13y agoI'm in agreement here. I've set up PGP email, and S/MIME, and it isn't really that hard to use once it's in place. Mail clients that support it offer easily-invokable "sign" and "encrypt and sign" options. But when few people you email use it, you yourself end up using it rarely, and then you get a new computer, lose your keys, and you can't even revoke them because you didn't keep a backup. So you have to do it all over again. Then it seems "difficult to use" because you have to stop and read some man pages again.
- jerguismi 13y ago> They're complaining in essence that PGP isn't automatic and frictionless. Exactly. That was cryptocat was, UX-wise. Automatic and frictionless. I believe if crypto can be built in that fashion, then it will really effect the world. In expert fields, GPG is used, but no average Joe uses it.