this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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That's the reason we have to still use fax machines right?

I know there are ways to do encryption like PGP on your message directly or I think email sent over TLS? But that isn't the default right and that's why I can't send a picture of my license to the insurance company directly over email?

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (4 children)

therefore making them harder to intercept.

You mean far, far easier to intercept? You used to be able to just stick a coil around the wires.

The main issue is just a lot of countries governments' don't trust computers still. In Germany they insist on fax and post as it's the only thing they can use as proof of signature in court, etc.

But it's government laws and regulation that is behind. It's not so much of a technical problem (although E2EE email standard would be nice!).

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Harder to intercept” as in you have to go outside where the grass is to play around with the telephone wires, as opposed to typey-typey in your mom’s basement. Ain’t nobody got time for that

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's the same though.

To intercept the email you need to be on a network that receives it (i.e. ISPs).

It being stored unencrypted is a totally different problem (and also for letters, faxes, etc.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

But it's government laws and regulation that is behind. It's not so much of a technical problem (although E2EE email standard would be nice!).

No. Government had nothing to do with it, these are separate issues. WhatsApp was never approved by the government, yet it's widely used and it has E2E. OTOH, German government accepts email for lots of things. I know of some public sectors requiring email with PGP even.

The actual problem is that both email and PGP are really bad. This on my opinion describes it very well: https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted.html

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

On top of that these days most phone calls are routed over the internet at some point too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Well, how do you proof an email has been delivered if you don't get a confirmation? That's the main problem when going to court.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this is a pain with faxes and letters too though - I had first-hand experience in Germany unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Would be interesting to require read receipts to be on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can't without the logs from the recipient server.