On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 12:03:02AM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
>I haven't yet gotten to the point of using privacy I don't need
>personally, as is obvious by this unsigned email.

I always sign my messages.

From what I understand, if my message is signed (and the signature is
valid), then it is proof that I actually wrote the message, and it isn't
a fake created by someone else with a spoofed address or something.

I once left my laptop unlocked and my little brother decided to play a
practical joke on me by sending some messages that resulted in me
getting banned from a forum.

That was a long time ago, but now that I sign everything, I can simply
say that anything that is not signed is (probably) not from me.

I guess it is stupid to be paranoid about GPG signatures, yet completely
transparent with everything else I do...


After reading your reply, as well as a few others, I have decided that I
will switch to using Tor for most of my online work.

I still think that unencrypted communication is faster since the data
doesn't have to be en/decrypted (I have no proof of this), but after
reading this quote:

On Thu, Mar 02, 2017 at 10:15:21PM +0100, Alessandro Selli wrote:
>Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have
>nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free
>speech because you have nothing to say.

I have decided that a few (possibly imaginary) milliseconds is a fair
trade-off. (Besides, cloning the linux kernel takes all night regardless.)

Thank you everyone for the information, and for putting things in
perspective for me.

I wish I had joined a mailing list like this 10 years ago, as Google
will never be an adequate substitute for just asking someone when the
question is not simple. (And unlike IRC, you don't need a constant
connection.)

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GPG Key: 0769 AFCF 681E F61E 2137 F4CB 5044 1726 610D 5AE0