kathysaunders said:
what is the answer in securing e-mail messages
You thought that was detailed enough for someone ELSE to understand what
you want? Okay, I'll guess that you want to encrypt your e-mails. That
means:
- For you to encrypt e-mails that you send to someone else, THEY have to
give your THEIR public key from their e-mail certificate (usually by
sending you a digitally signed e-mail and you save the sender in your
contacts folder which saves their public key). You use their public key
to encrypt your message. Only they have the private key (the other half
of the e-mail certificate). Anyone intercepting your encrypted e-mail
won't have their private key so they cannot decrypt your message. Only
the person having the private key can decrypt the message.
- For them to encrypt e-mails to you, YOU must send them your public key
from your e-mail certificate. They use your public key to encrypt their
message. You are the only one with the private key that is required to
decrypt their message.
This is like an invite system. The one who wants to GET encrypted
e-mails sends out their public key to other senders.
Although Thawte was bought by Verisign, they still exist as a separate
corporate entity and still provide free personal e-mail certificates.
However, if by securing e-mails you meant that you do not want anyone to
modify your e-mails after you send them and they receive them then
forget it unless you and the recipient(s) are in a closed environment.
Once you send an e-mail, you have no control over it. Anyone can modify
it however they want. If you are in a company environment where you log
into domains, use Outlook, and they use Exchange then you can assign
rights to your e-mail if and only if your company also employs a Rights
Management (RM) server to enforce those rights. You'll have to ask your
company's IT department as to whether or not they use Exchange and also
use a RM server.
ALWAYS REVIEW your message before submitting it. You want someone ELSE
to understand your post other than just yourself.
Usually you get one chance per potential respondent to elicit a reply
from them. If they skip your post because you gave them nothing to go
on (no details, no versions, no context), usually they will just move on
to the next post and never return to yours. Go read:
What is Usenet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroups
http://www.masonicinfo.com/newsgroups.htm
http://www.mcfedries.com/Ramblings/usenet-primer.asp
How to post to newsgroups:
http://66.39.69.143/goodpost.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
http://users.tpg.com.au/bzyhjr/liszt.html
http://www.mugsy.org/asa_faq/getting_along/usenet.shtml