Forwarded from alt.cyberspace: ------------------------------ ->> Joseph T Dickinson was mumbling something about Encryption <<- JTD> It is illegal to encrypt messages period. JTD> E-mail encryption is illegal Depends on your network and where you live. It is illegal to use PGP in the United States due to its use of a copyrighted algoritm. It is *NOT* illegal to use it anywhere else in the world. Other encryption methods are legal. In Fidonet (the largest *amatuer* mail network), it is against policy to encrypt 'echomail' (Fido version of newsgroups), but perfectly acceptable to encrypt *direct* netmail (Fido email delivered directly to the recieving system without regard to its location). Routed netmail (email passed from system to system before eventually arriving at its destination) may be encrypted provided each sysop whose node the message passes through agrees that the message may be encrypted, otherwise, it has to be sent en claire. On RIME (Relaynet International Mail Exchange, the *2nd* largest amatuer run network), email is regularly encrypted as part of the networking and routing software in use by the network. Sending routed, reciever-only mail is not only common, but *encouraged*, since it cuts down on the overhead of the other systems in the net. You'd have to look at the network's topology to see why; it's basically a 'tree' formation in which nodes at the bottom feed their newsgroups up to the topstars and recieve them from the topstars. Keven ... Get the facts first - you can distort them later! ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12