Re:GPG and Me
by joshstrange on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @10:06AM
(#9107021)
Couldn't agree more. I have public keys available and I understand the concepts at a high to medium level but if it's taken me as long as it has to get a grasp on it (And I still would need to do a number of google searches if I received an encrypted email) how can I expect all of my friends to ever get it? They want something that "Just Works" and so they gladly use (as do I) Facebook, iMessage, SMS, and Email. All unencrypted (Well iMessage is encrypted but I know they could easily view any messages they want). They still have password-reuse issues all over the place (my hands aren't clean either).
It's not that I don't care about privacy, I very much do, and my friends care as well (to a slightly lesser extent I would say and I'm willing to accept more to get to that point than they are). It's just that I am completely overwhelmed, only 1-2 of my friends even understand encryption at a high level and none of them expose private keys for communication. Even other developers I worked with got annoyed with OTR with adium/pidgin to the point I had to turn it off. It's not that I want to throw in the towel, I desperately want a solution, but even easy to use (what I'm looking for) "secure" communication tools get torn to shreds here on HN and so I haven't even considered trying to get them all to switch tools (even I thought it was possible, which I don't).
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not going to stop talking to my friends and my friends more or less refuse (due to complexity) to use encryption so what is the purpose of me even trying? The end result would be what? Maybe 1-2 people with which I can talk securely? Now I have to have 2 workflows and even if I have super-secure unique PW's, FDE (Full Disk Encryption, which I do use), and take steps to secure all MY data all of my friends are essentially leaking my data. So if the NSA/FBI/China/Hacker/etc want my communications they can just go after the weakest link, the people I talk to. It's very disheartening to say the very least.
I've considered blogging about this a number of times but didn't want to get destroyed here on HN (if I even posted it here, I probably wouldn't due to backlash) for being defeatist or get told how I am the problem. I am not a cryptographer and therefore am not qualified to even attempt to build secure software (if I even thought I was capable of coding up such a project). Even the tools that are easy to use that DO use tried and true encryption (Like PGP gmail/chrome extension, that's all well and good but what if I'm on mobile? Or on a friends computer? It's just too restrictive) are locked to a an OS/Browser/Device. I really do understand I'm asking for quite a lot (Cross-platform AND cross-device) but without those "features" there is no way I could get my peers to switch.
I'd love to have someone reply with how wrong I am how there is X tool/product/service that satisfies my requirements but I've searched high and low so I don't expect such a reply...
It's not that I don't care about privacy, I very much do, and my friends care as well (to a slightly lesser extent I would say and I'm willing to accept more to get to that point than they are). It's just that I am completely overwhelmed, only 1-2 of my friends even understand encryption at a high level and none of them expose private keys for communication. Even other developers I worked with got annoyed with OTR with adium/pidgin to the point I had to turn it off. It's not that I want to throw in the towel, I desperately want a solution, but even easy to use (what I'm looking for) "secure" communication tools get torn to shreds here on HN and so I haven't even considered trying to get them all to switch tools (even I thought it was possible, which I don't).
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not going to stop talking to my friends and my friends more or less refuse (due to complexity) to use encryption so what is the purpose of me even trying? The end result would be what? Maybe 1-2 people with which I can talk securely? Now I have to have 2 workflows and even if I have super-secure unique PW's, FDE (Full Disk Encryption, which I do use), and take steps to secure all MY data all of my friends are essentially leaking my data. So if the NSA/FBI/China/Hacker/etc want my communications they can just go after the weakest link, the people I talk to. It's very disheartening to say the very least.
I've considered blogging about this a number of times but didn't want to get destroyed here on HN (if I even posted it here, I probably wouldn't due to backlash) for being defeatist or get told how I am the problem. I am not a cryptographer and therefore am not qualified to even attempt to build secure software (if I even thought I was capable of coding up such a project). Even the tools that are easy to use that DO use tried and true encryption (Like PGP gmail/chrome extension, that's all well and good but what if I'm on mobile? Or on a friends computer? It's just too restrictive) are locked to a an OS/Browser/Device. I really do understand I'm asking for quite a lot (Cross-platform AND cross-device) but without those "features" there is no way I could get my peers to switch.
I'd love to have someone reply with how wrong I am how there is X tool/product/service that satisfies my requirements but I've searched high and low so I don't expect such a reply...