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I don't think email encryption will ever be more widespread than it is today. People simply don't care, and even those few that can be convinced to use it will

by okasaki 12y ago

I don't think email encryption will ever be more widespread than it is today. People simply don't care, and even those few that can be convinced to use it will invariably do something that invalidates the whole exercise like bring their key to a public library, use it on their phone, resend the entire conversation in plain text accidentally, lose the key and generate a new one with you having no way to verify that it's not actually mitm, etc. All of this has happened to me.

nickik 12y ago
Thats why its the goal of darkmail to push it so its used by gmail and organsiations like that.
alkonaut 12y ago
It will be widespread like https has made encrypted web browsing wide spread: when it requires zero effort and zero knowledge.
toyg 12y ago
> People simply don't care that's because they think email is already private. They don't understand that it's the electronic equivalent of printing their conversations on billboards and hope nobody will actually look at them. As soon as you demonstrate with a simple sniffer, they are outraged. We just need "Firesheep for email" and then demand for privacy will explode.
- eddieroger 12y ago
  Even after the Sony hack, people don't realize things like their work email isn't really theirs, or email isn't private. If that wasn't a good enough catalyst, I can't imagine what it will take to cross this threshold.
higherpurpose 12y ago
The point of DIME is to get providers to implement it, though. The power of defaults is pretty strong. Even just having a icon to click on every message is orders of magnitude better than having to set up PGP.
irq-1 12y ago
We don't need the general population to understand email security - they use what's available/provided and it'll have to be easy enough that it works in practice. Once there's a viable alternative and financial liability is tied to the pretense of email being secure, suddenly we'll change to the new system. What's interesting is that it's only liberty minded tech people working on the problem. The next email system will be tailored to protect the user because that's what the designers care about, rather than the interests of other organizations, for example serving legal papers electronically.

by okasaki 12y ago

nickik 12y ago

Thats why its the goal of darkmail to push it so its used by gmail and organsiations like that.

alkonaut 12y ago

It will be widespread like https has made encrypted web browsing wide spread: when it requires zero effort and zero knowledge.

toyg 12y ago

> People simply don't care that's because they think email is already private. They don't understand that it's the electronic equivalent of printing their conversations on billboards and hope nobody will actually look at them. As soon as you demonstrate with a simple sniffer, they are outraged. We just need "Firesheep for email" and then demand for privacy will explode.

eddieroger 12y ago
Even after the Sony hack, people don't realize things like their work email isn't really theirs, or email isn't private. If that wasn't a good enough catalyst, I can't imagine what it will take to cross this threshold.

higherpurpose 12y ago

The point of DIME is to get providers to implement it, though. The power of defaults is pretty strong. Even just having a icon to click on every message is orders of magnitude better than having to set up PGP.

irq-1 12y ago

We don't need the general population to understand email security - they use what's available/provided and it'll have to be easy enough that it works in practice. Once there's a viable alternative and financial liability is tied to the pretense of email being secure, suddenly we'll change to the new system. What's interesting is that it's only liberty minded tech people working on the problem. The next email system will be tailored to protect the user because that's what the designers care about, rather than the interests of other organizations, for example serving legal papers electronically.