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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 16 Jan 2003 7:20 pm, Neil Williams wrote: > I just lost a nicely crafted reply to Steve Marvell's question about > GnuPG/PGP signatures. > I'm aborting this session in Mozilla Mail before I get a headache. Back > to KMail for me. Basically, Steve (as mozilla can't recover the longer answer I'd written), it's about my reputation - I want to be accountable for the advice and comment I send out and I don't want anyone to act on spurious advice from someone pretending to be me. It is also easier for people to filter out spam if genuine emails are signed - spammers are not going to sign their spam! Even if they created false keys, that would just make it easier to filter out spam using those keys. Sending email that purports to be from someone else is ridiculously easy if the receiver is unlikely to check the email headers. The From: address in any email is about as reliable as a wet paper bag. Even those who do check the headers cannot do so for all emails received, and programs like SpamAssassin which check headers and content, whilst catching a lot of spam, cannot catch absolutely everything. There is simply too much bad email out there, pretending to be from non-existent people / machines that simply adds you to the list if you try and reply to the 'unsubscribe here' links. Imagine how different it could be if all genuine emails WERE signed - if that point of 'critical mass' could be achieved, just where would spam go? - -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk http://www.dclug.org.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+JwoFiAEJSii8s+MRArfPAJ952LbJkJf10seni89BiJK+1vU+vQCfQyc1 U8uGWiihtAsZu12ZG/XlS9Q= =MEGv -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.