That's what's wrong with the net in general. 10+ years ago, when I started using it, it was hard to use e-mail and Usenet, so most of the people using it had to be fairly intelligent. Today, no intelligence is required to use e-mail, or even a cpunks anonymous remailer. I wish crypto software and mail filtering software followed the suit and became as easy to use and transparent at the rest of our comm software.
Long for the good old days of bang-paths, 300 baud acoustic couplers and UUCP maps? see http://www.lne.com/lemay/writings/curmudgeonnet.html
I've been communicating with one sci.crypt personality, who configured his procmail to accept e-mail only from a list of people he knows. To be able to send him e-mail, I had to contact him by other means and ask him to add my name to the list of approved correspondents. :) He's not checking digital signatures, just the from lines. (By the way, he's not on cypherpunks because he considers the level of crypto expertise here to be too low.)
Is this where we're heading?
Close. Where we're headed is mail filters with PGP imbedded (PGP 3 will make this much easier) that check incoming mail for a valid signature for certain PGP keyid/fingerprints and pass that mail along. Other mail that doesn't match gets tossed into a 'junk' folder or thrown away if you really don't want to talk to anyone that you don't already know. -- Eric Murray ericm@lne.com ericm@motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF