logoalt Hacker News

tptaceklast Sunday at 6:06 PM2 repliesview on HN

It's not that someone can forward your mail unencrypted. It's that in the normal operation of the system, someone taking the natural next step in a conversation (replying) can --- and, in the experience of everyone I've talked to who has used PGP in anger for any extended period of time, inevitably does --- destroy the security of the entire conversation by accidentally replying in plaintext.

That can't happen in any modern encrypted messenger. It does happen routinely with encrypted email.


Replies

mjevanslast Sunday at 6:35 PM

Yes, it's a problem with _email_.

pgp as a tool could integrate with that, but in practice fails for... many reasons, the above included. All the other key exchange / etc issues as well.

pheggslast Sunday at 11:00 PM

well that's fair, but sounds more like a email client issue than an actual issue with gpg/pgp. My client shows pretty clearly when it gets encrypted. But maybe I am oblivious.

show 1 reply