The "fart angle"
(ahem ...) is 'interesting.' Especially since we
all know that a Marketroid just might
do it!
(After all, "Marketroids" never take a ...
errr, umm, well anyway ... be-
cause they're full of ...
ummmm )
====
However, we
should expect that, as a matter of course,
every bit of our e-mail communications are being recorded. (Ditto that every comment that we make on this forum or any other is being preserved, even if we "delete" them.) There is, fortunately ...
(see below)
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Comment: GPGTools -
http://gpgtools.org
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=zPFY
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
To decrypt, use OpenGPG Key-ID: 2780F874. (server: keys.gnupg.net)
OpenGPG Fingerprint: 0390 195F 7D6C 3155 A738 0C9B 3191 919F 2780 F874.
... or, just read on ...
People so-far have been conditioned to use
https:// for their on-line orders, yet they so-far do not exercise
any security at all with regards to: e-mail, Facebook, Twitter ...
Entirely as a matter of course,
all of my dealings with business contacts take place using GPG-secured email ... and I don't have to think twice about it, because with my e-mail software "it just works.™" When I send an e-mail to certain people, it's automatically encrypted, and when I receive one, it's automatically decrypted. (Any email that is ostensibly from them, which is
not encrypted, is flagged as probably-bogus.) None of this is hard to do.
(And: decryption of the above block of ciphertext –
"a simple way to deal with that" – is
also "just a right-mouse click away.")
At
this point, these sorts of precautions have not yet shown up on "the public Radar." But, I think, they soon will. Effective encryption
can be "transparent," and very soon I think it will be. When that happens, the evesdroppers among us (yes, including The Almighty Google™) will be plunged back into the dark. Where they properly belong.
And in the meantime ... other silly-things might be taken care of. For instance,
why aren't bona-fide emails from (say) Delta Airlines, automatically and routinely digitally-signed with Delta's easily-verifiable S/MIME and GPG keys?! Since we
have the technology to completely-prevent bogus or tampered-with emails ...
and since emails from companies like these are exceptionally important (to transportation security (!!)) ... why aren't we already doing this,
and why isn't GMail's widely-used webmail service
and mobile-app already doing this "routinely?"
In many ways, "it's high time that the Internet started to
grow up."