[plug] PGP-signing. Was: Help! Network Problems!

[Christian]

Mike Holland wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> 
> > It's not encryption, it's a digital signature. It is used to prove that
> > the message really was sent by the person claiming to have sent it. I
> > certainly wouldn't call it redundant.
> 
> Is it redundant if nobody checks it?

I'm not sure... is looking both ways redundant when crossing a road
which normally doesn't have much traffic?  It *may* be redundant
currently but it's probably still a good habit to get into -- the more
people use cryptographic technology, the better the infrastructure will
be which is currently one of the big limiting factors.

> Digital signatures are a great idea, but not in the body of an e-mail.
> They are meant for machines to read, and just annoy humans.
>   I remember Greg Rose ( http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ ) had a system
> for adding a dig.sig. as an X-auth: header line. e.g.:

They can also be transmitted as a MIME attachment which I suppose is a
similar concept.

Regards,

Christian.