It's actually much worse than you expect. Most email clients don't show the email address of the sender; they show the display name. If you get an email from "The President <[email protected]>", most users will see that the email comes "The President." And [email protected] could get a valid signature for her domain, because she obviously controls it, and people would see that the email from "The President" really did come from "The President."

There are many problems with email. The ability for [email protected] to claim to be [email protected] is not at the top of the list.

Why do so many email clients do this? In my opinion, it only makes things more confusing. It's especially irritating when a contact has multiple email addresses (work/personal) and it's not obvious which is which.

And you must not work in tech support. But all this is irrelevant for the most part because aside from understanding WHY it's useful and important, there's the fact that most people are using web clients, and trying to, say, sign or verify a message in GMail is pretty much an unclimbable mountain for the vast majority of people.

Heck, even on desktop clients it's a pain in the ass. Ever tried to create, install, and use an S/MIME certificate in a major desktop client, like Outlook or Apple Mail? It's ridiculous. An obscure mix of trying to use the right browser, export the certificate in the right format, sometimes even convert it on the command line, use the right mail client extension, etc.

So it's the tools that are the main problem.

Until S/MIME or similar is built into major webmail clients, and certificate creation and installation is simple on the desktop, it's never going to happen.

> And you must not work in tech support.

The people you see in tech support are not representative for the entire population.

This is like working in a hospital and coming to the conclusion that most people in the world have a serious illness.

"What do you mean there's no proof it came from me, it says <name>@gmail.com right there in the sender address! What do you mean the sender address can be spoofed? Headers? What's that."

...and then you tell them that it's exactly like someone writing a fake return address on a piece of mail before sending it to you, and they understand, because as stated above, this is conceptually very simple. You don't need to talk about "headers" at all - I don't know why you're bringing them up.

Exactly. And now imagine you manage in some way to explain average user that he cannot trust email sender. Then explain him that if email is signed then it is OK. He will most probably answer "why the hell now should I trust email sender !? There is just a dumb icon saying the email is signed. I do not trust it !!!". Which would just be the most sane reaction actually

> When you send an email there is no proof that it came from you.

I can imagine the average person replying 'yes there is there's the from box in the email'.

It's not a case of not understanding, it's a case of not believing. If you're talking to a lay person that trusts you, they may raise such an objection, but they'll believe you once you reply "that can be, and often is, faked".

Belief is a thorny issue when trying to communicate to the masses, though.

Just because some users don't know what they're doing means all users are idiots.

This is like "we shouldn't use locks because some people often lose their keys".

I don't know if you're replying to the wrong person, but I'm not arguing we shouldn't use anything. I'm answering 'will they understand' and my opinion is 'no'.

haha, I don't think you understand. If I told my dad "There is no proof that an email that came from me, came from me." He's going to say... "but it came from <myname>@gmail.com"

That's what you don't seem to comprehend. Yes, for you this seems obvious. But really, to the average Joe/Jill, this idea that you could get an email from the address you expect but it has been spoofed is gibberish.

And you really think you couldn't explain that to him? There's a large difference between what people intuitively expect and what they can understand if told about it. Envelope analogies can go surprisingly far. (Assuming they believe you. If they think you can't be trusted about such things, then that's a problem of course)

Frankly I do not. My own mother tries her hardest, but I can't stop her from using variants of "Iam${X}.123" for her bank passwords and etc.

Let alone am I going to try getting her to use PGP and sign her emails.

Where X = (e.g.) bankofamerica? Or X = mother's name? Either way, yikes.

I knew a smart guy that believed someone could physically watch him through his monitor.

Given laptop webcam placement these days, this is kinda true...

I was looking at (budget) desktop monitors the other day, and noticed a disturbing number of them included a built-in webcam.

TEMPEST but to the max

And?

As an example of people not understanding the tech around them.

> I really don't see what's so hard

This is hilarious. Do you have parents and/or grandparents?

Have you not had to repeatedly explain the simplest things over and over again? User names and passwords are hard enough, and you're expecting most people to understand email signing?

What experience do you base this expectation on?