Poor Johnny still won't encrypt
28 comments
·December 13, 2025laserbeam
AnonC
> I have lost chat histories more times than I can remember, and I have to be extra diligent about this these days.
As per Signal’s diehard proponents, losing chat history is a feature, not a bug (I’m not being facetious when saying this, and you can see comments of this kind in Signal related threads here).
Edited to add: I don’t agree with that premise and have long disliked losing chat history.
laserbeam
I know you are not being facetious. My problem is random Joe on the street sees it as a bug. He really does care more about actually being able to talk with his wife than Signal’s mathematically correct principles. He needs it to be reliable first, secure second.
AnonC
GP here. I agree. I should’ve stated that I don’t like losing chat history and have seen that as a problem with Signal.
I have edited my previous comment to reflect that I don’t like losing chat history.
IlikeKitties
> He needs it to be reliable first, secure second.
Than he should use something else. I need signal to be secure first, second and third and reliable in edge cases like this a distant number.
wood_spirit
My company recently really cut back on slack retention. At first I was frustrated, but we all quickly got over it and work carried on getting done at the same pace as before and nothing really got impacted like many of us imagined it might.
wmf
Apple/Google passkeys.
throwaway82931
Indeed, passkeys would seem to represent a step forward from single-device to single-account.
yardstick
I’ve got hundreds of emails from the early 2010s between a couple of coworkers and myself that I can no longer read because they were S/MIME encrypted and I’ve got no idea what happened to my keys or even if my current client supports it anymore.
I wish the client stored it decrypted once received.
pcthrowaway
> Proton is a notable exception.
Proton doesn't provide public APIs for retrieving the public GPG keys associated with their users' accounts, nor do they provide a way to send encrypted mail to their users' accounts without using their official apps.
Ergo, Proton is not really working to further the state of cryptography for email, they're only working to compel users to use their proprietary software (and ultimately their paid services).
If services which do automated sending of emails to their subscribers/users have no way to encrypt those emails for its users who are on proton mail, I don't understand how Proton can claim to care about encryption.
bradley13
It's weird. Almost all web traffic is now https - even though very little of it is sensitive. Email, on the other hand, is quite often sensitive, and yet...no one cares.
Why?
mmh0000
Nearly all email is encrypted in transit. All major MTA systems send encrypted and accept encrypted as the default.
This article is about encrypting the body of the email which is easy* but no widely implemented standard exists.
* Stupid easy for two nerds to email securely.
* Stupid hard to work with multiple people and non-nerds.
xeonmc
might age fit the bill?
laserbeam
Unfortunately, those are 2 different problems. It’s easy to have servers store encryption keys to make https work. You only need to encrypt trafic between you and a server for 5 seconds at a time.
It’s hard for personal communications. The server shouldn’t know the keys, and they need to survive for decades.
wmf
HTTPS is pervasive because Google encouraged it. Gmail could force S/MIME but they don't care.
hugo1789
I think mandatory S/MIME without user-friendly key management would either be reverted pretty soon or it would kill Gmail.
wmf
Google would have to build some kind of Let's Encrypt for S/MIME before they turned on the encouragement.
ghssds
why did google wanted it?
sorbusherra
I consider e-mails to be digital versions of postcards. Both are obsolete but have some usage scenarios. There is no need to use private communication in obsolete postcard type messaging, so there is no need for encryption. For private communications there are other better(easier) means which people use.
xeonmc
If you want encrypted communication over email, there's DeltaChat.
erelong
Issue 1: Establishing lots of reasons why people should encrypt
Issue 2: Making it easy to encrypt
Issue 3: Popularizing encryption or getting more people to do it
FerretFred
Issue 3.. most/many governments are taking active steps to discourage this practice or better still (for them), stamp it out completely.
null
tomlockwood
I thought this title was a reference to this David Bowie/NIN song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT3cERVRoQo
zkmon
Maybe Johnny doesn't have a need to encrypt. The post card in India was just a card with message written on both sides, fully visible in plain text. It's very common that a postman would read out the letter to recipients sometimes, when they deliver it. Privacy is not an universal need.
Poor are those people who are forced to hide their message in encrypted formats,
dghlsakjg
Nobody expects privacy when they send a postcard.
Most people keep their emails behind a password for a reason...
zkmon
The point is, why not let people to have freedom of not having to encrypt? And why such freedom is considered as poor? This is like forcing everyone to have a smart phone, car, passport, zillions of IDs, internet profiles and calling their shackled life as rich.
The other day someone was shocked to see that I don't have FB and instagram accounts. When did people lose their freedom not have social media accounts?
Someone needs to design a super dumb and robust system where I can safely store all my keys on all devices I use an account. The fact that whatsapp, signal and other platforms tend to have a primary device for keys is bonkers to me. A primary device that can randomly die, get stolen or fall in a lake.
I have lost chat histories more times than I can remember, and I have to be extra diligent about this these days.
I don’t even want to think about pgp when I have to manually take care of this problem. Not because of my own skills, but because I could never make it reliable for my family and friends on their side.