Ask HN: Why is PGP not used widely?

Post by steveklabnik » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 6:23 PM UTC

BenThePyrate wrote: post #70

steveklabnik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I have made an active use of GPG over the last few months, and there's a few big problems: 1. A UX that is... Hard. As you say. See the last few minutes of this talk I did: http://youtu.be/LjZk8PP-u3c 2. You can't PGP with webmail. 3. You can't PGP on mobile. 4. This means that unless you're on your desktop, you can't do things like search through older emails, which is really important. 5. It requires both peop…

1. Agreed. 2. http://www.mailvelope.com/ https://countermail.com/ http://www.hushmail.com/ 3. http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/ 4. Well, you could if you jump through some hoops. Which describes using PGP in general. 5. Not only that, it requires both people to use it _correctly_.

Post by cryptos » Tue, Nov 05, 2013, 8:57 AM UTC

claudius wrote: post #28

dalek_cannes wrote: post #14

I think it's because there still isn't a good metaphor that covers up the complexity of public key encryption. Such a metaphor is a prerequisite for a UI that the average user can comprehend. First, I think we should rename the keys to 'locking key' and 'unlocking key'. I've had people still scratch their heads at 'public/private' a few days after I've completely explained the concept to them. They find it easier to…

> First, I think we should rename the keys to 'locking key' and 'unlocking key'. Why not go a step further and call one ‘key’ and the other ‘lock’? So you can share (copies of) your lock freely with others, and if they want to send encrypted email to you, they take your ‘lock’ and put it on that email. It then becomes obvious that you shouldn’t share the private key (after all, anybody could then unlock the locks) an…