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Re: [LUG] KMail - Plain text

 

On Sunday 21 August 2005 11:41 am, David Bell wrote:
> On Sunday 21 Aug 2005 11:26, Neil Williams wrote:
> > e.g. mine is:
> > KDE 3.3.2
> > KMail 1.7.2 (running inside Kontact)
>
> Same here.  I merely don't want split screen message displays

? You mean the preview window?

> and having to 
> either select the 7  bit plain text version,

I think your preview window is too small !
:-)

> or scroll down the screen if 
> the message is more than a few as lines; as the screen is mostly filled
> with "message displyed with unknown key .....".

To reduce that message to just two lines, you could install gpg, check the box 
in KMail and let gpg retrieve keys automatically. Then it would be a two line 
yellow notice instead of the longer purple-ish one.

Of course, I would say that - I'd like everyone to only ever use signed email!

email without a signature is like junk mail sent to Dear Sir/Madam - they've 
got no idea who you are and I've got NO idea if your email really comes from 
you. Anyone can send email from David Bell mumble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The 
list doesn't know any better, so anyone at all can pretend to be you on the 
list and anywhere else. I've done this before - as proof for those who didn't 
believe - it is trivially easy for me to send an unsigned email to this list 
as if it came from your email address. Nobody would be able to tell just from 
the default appearance in the window. You'd have to check the email headers 
quite carefully to find the change. How often does anyone actually do that?

All I have to do is create a new Identity in KMail with your name and email 
address details and send to the list as that identity. Simple.

Now try and send email pretending to be me - the lack of a signature gives the 
game away. But you don't sign, so how can I be sure that it really IS you 
sending your email? It could be Simon, or Robin or Lord Lucan even Bill 
Gates!

Think of the problems of accountability, libel and identification. Think of 
the misunderstandings, the confusion, the sheer hassle of trying to prove to 
someone that it wasn't actually you who sent them an email from your address 
calling their parentage into question, etc. etc.

The only way to protect yourself from that is to SIGN ALL EMAIL. If everyone 
you send to gets used to the fact that everything you send is always signed, 
they will notice one that is not signed and question it's source. Nobody can 
fake my signature without compromising the key so it provides complete 
assurance that anything signed with this key really was typed BY me.

> Not to worry, if there ain't a simple solution I'll have to scratch around
> for a different client.

Thunderbird makes the signature less noticeable (which is one of the reasons I 
dislike using it for my own email).

I would strongly recommend that you actually SIGN your own emails and give 
others some assurance that it really is you sending the email. There is no 
other method of giving such assurance.

How do I know the message came from you?

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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