From: Alan Olsen <alano@teleport.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 13:51:56 +0800
To: "P.J. Ponder" <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Secure Mail (Was: IMC resolving security workshop)
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960223063622.0089dbe4@mail.teleport.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 12:47 AM 2/23/96 +0000, P.J. Ponder wrote:

>ObSecureMail: I got the beta Pronto secure mail, but haven't had tome to 
>fool with it yet, then I got a mesage about a bad key or something. 
>What's up with that?

My experience so far has not been very positive.

I have tried both of the betas on Win95.  Neither of the betas have been
able to get past the "Synchronising keys" section of the setup.  The program
just keeps accessing my public keyring for almost 30 mins before it returns
a cryptic error 111.

What I have seen of it, I am not very happy with some of the design choices.
You should be able to tell it the hex id of the key that you want to use
with the mailer.  Nope!  It tries to find what it thinks the key should be
based on your e-mail address.  Since I have two keys under that address,
there is a wee bit of a problem.  I have tried generating a new one as well,
and i still get the problems with the key sync.  (As in it not completing
and ending with an obscure error message.)  So far, my last message to the
beta address has gone unanswered on this problem.

I would like to test it further, but getting that far has not been very easy
at this stage of the development.  Not a hopeful sign.
---
Alan Olsen -- alano@teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction
        `finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key 
                http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ 
  "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon
"I, Caligula Clinton... In the name of the Senate and the people of Rome!"
   - Bill Clinton signing the CDA with the First Amendment bent over.