Re:Quora User Data Compromised
by closeparen on Monday December 03, 2018 @10:37PM
(#18595960)
Annoying as it is, it’s better than sensitive data in cleartext email attachments.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
No, it is not. My email account is - obviously to say 'secure' as a binary proposition is inappropriate, but about as secure as anything on the Internet ever gets for most people. Training people to click an email link and type their password into the resulting page, by contrast, basically throws the entire concept of security out the window.
Email can be encrypted. Besides that most of the time these very same services have (broken) password reset processes that rely on that email address anyway so the security improvement is nil in practice.
Re:Quora User Data Compromised
by closeparen on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @03:10AM
(#18597348)
No medical practice, HOA, etc. is ever going to ask its patrons to fiddle around with PGP. The receptionist is not going to ask my grandmother for her public key before her hip replacement. Email functionally cannot be encrypted unless all parties to the conversation are in a tiny cohort of computer enthusiasts.
Password reset is a noisy, active attack compared to eavesdropping somewhere in the path of an email.