Double setup for encrypted email on iOS/macOS: via S/MIME and PGP
giuliomagnifico.medium.com
giuliomagnifico.medium.com
PGP has tons of security and usability issues and a prehistoric setup process for onboarding less technical users, which that alone is the reason why they don't use it and this setup scares in the first place.
The best E2E communication tools / applications are the ones which make the setup process all inside the application and the encryption setup invisible and painless for everyone.
Using the S/MIME config, is quite transparent and easy, it's very boring and long to setup all the certificates etc.. but then is transparent to use.
I don't understand why people are concerned about their privacy for Whatsapp and Facebook and they're sending and receiveing "plain text" not encrypted emails. Sounds a weird thing if you are concerned about your privacy.
Yeah, wouldn't that be great? Unfortunately, the identity management stuff requires the user to understand a fairly unintuitive concept. You can nag people to check their key fingerprint ("safety numbers" in Signal) and they might, but when it suddenly changes they won't have the faintest idea of what they should do.
There has been an endless cycle of failing to address the actual problem over the years. The current discussion is just the latest iteration.
This is of course completely unacceptable. It's insulting, really.
There are no providers of free S/MIME certificate for private consumers with a duration of 1 year or more.
If you have any suggestion on other S/MIME CA providers, also not free, but is not the price the trouble here, you have to trust someone who generates the certificate.