Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 18:40:53 -0400
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Speel checkers?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Ted White wrote:
>
> Steve Smith wrote:
>
> > [...]
> >
> > Another interesting aspect of spam just showed up.  My ISP uses a rather
> > well-regarded spam filtering company to process all their e-mail.
> > (http://www.postini.com/)  I haven't had any problem with it until
> > today, when significant chunks of this discussion landed in the spam
> > bucket.
>
> Actual content filtering is *dangerous*.  It implies content monitoring.

E-mail is wide open anyway.  The only things keeping anybody at an ISP
from reading your mail any time they want are their employee policies,
their basic honesty (ha!), and the sheer volume of e-mail (two thirds of
which, last time I saw a number, was *not* spam.)

If you don't want people reading your e-mail, you need to encrypt it.
Both Netscape and Microsoft mail programs have encryption built in.

To use it, you have to get a "certificate".  To do this, go to
http://www.thawte.com/getinfo/products/personal/contents.html
and follow the instructions.  It's free.  They want a "Government issued
ID number", but they don't check it.  If you make up a number, write it
down, as you may need it later.

To send encrypted or digitally signed e-mail to somebody, you have to
have the "public" version of their certificate.  Easiest way to do this
is to have the people that you want to send secure e-mail to, send you a
digitally signed message.  Then you can send encrypted mail back to
them.  The buttons to click are under "Tools" (Outlook Express) or
"Communicator->Tools->Security Info" (Netscape) or "Options->Security"
(Mozilla).

We can't send digitally signed mail on the list here; Keith's software
would throw it away.  If anybody wants to send me encrypted mail, for
practice or any other reason, just drop me a line and I'll send you a
signed message.

Note -- this is the simple version.  If you want the full woo-woo
tinfoil hat version, see me at a WSFA meeting or drop me a note
(preferably digitally signed).

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."