Recommendations For Personal Digital Certificates?

Keith M Ellis asks: "I've decided it's about time to fully utilize privacy and digital id technology into my internet use. I've used PGP off-and-on for years, of course; and have been half-aware of other services like VeriSign et al. However, now that I'm looking more closely at these technologies, I've been disappointed to find that there doesn't seem to be anything that seamlessly and relatively unobtrusively plugs-in to my various applications and OS. What are the current options for achieving this level of integration; and, if there really aren't any, I'm interested in any thoughts anyone might have about why this is the case and what the future might hold."

Comments

Re:Why PGP is not integrated into applications

[Rick the Red]

Privacy and networking are not opposing forces. The drive to network led us to invent the postal service, and that came with privacy from day one. The analogy is simple: email is a postcard; encrypted email is a letter in an envelope. Even if most people will never read your emails, just as most people will never read your postcards, it is quite possible for your ISP (and many others you don't know) to read your emails, just as it's possible for everyone at the post office to read postcards.

Most people pay bills by mail without a second thought, but they would never pay bills by email. Perhaps that will change with univerally accepted encryption. The question is how to get there from here, and "one person at a time" is as good a way as any.