Authenticating email

[Simon Bowring]

>Sorry, but I disagree.  Not everyone is a geek

Indeed - it is too much to expect "ordinary people" to get PGP 
installed and working on their PCs - I recently tried to get a 
US AOL user (yes, I know!), going with PGP (over email);  we gave 
up!

I did point him at PMMail2k Professional, but we didn't want to
screw up his ISP setup and I have no idea if PMMail2k would 
work with AOL (anyone know?).

>and the whole idea of digital signatures is rather foreign to most people.
Not for very much longer - they're going to be "required" sooner
or later.  It's also not a hard concept - it's a "signature" which 
is "digital" and is unique to the combination of sender and the data 
it signs - it is not really necessary that people understand about 
cryptographic checksums etc to understand the concept of a digital 
sig (though it can't hurt if they do!).

A quote from the "What is a digital signature" page at 
http://www.youdzone.com/signature.html

"A digital signature is a "stamp" Bob places on the data which is 
 unique to Bob, and is very difficult to forge. In addition, the 
 signature assures that any changes made to the data that has been
 signed cannot go undetected."

Simon