From: Chris 

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No, not really.  The PGP Public Key is used if you want to send me an
encrypted message.  My private key is not available to the general populous
because it's just that...private (and used to decode the messages encrypted
with the public key).

The reason you can read the message is because I did not encrypt the
message.  Signing the message with my PGP key is like a digital signature,
if you will permit the analogy.  You can examine the signature and compare
it to the signature found on the various PGP Key repositories.  For
example, in alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim, there is a poster named Lawn
Dart who signs her messages.  I have a plug-in for Thunderbird that
examines the PGP key and, if I choose, can validate it against the
repositories.  The US-CERT signs all of their messages, too.
 Part of this is to verify the authenticity of a message.  Ok, I've
rambled and confused it all around.  Can someone make better sense of what
I am saying?

Also, for Antti's benefit (and with Geo's tolerance), I will post a
duplicate of this message in an encrypted form.

/Chris


Antti Kurenniemi wrote:
> Zoink -> quick jump to a whole different topic here: What's with
the "PGP
> signed message" stuff in this posting? I see it sometimes, but I don't
> really get it. I though PGP was some sort of message encrypting system, but
> the message source here is in plain text, and I sure don't have to enter any
> keys or anything like that to read these messages. Or is this "security by
> giving an impression of security"? 
>
>
> Antti Kurenniemi
>
> "Chris"  wrote in message news:44287685$1{at}w3....
> I use Thunderbird for Mail, News, and RSS feeds.  I even have multiple
> news servers.  I posted a screenshot of my setup in the binaries.
> (subj: Thunderbird)
>
> /Chris
>
>
> Dave Ings wrote:
>>>> Anybody here use or have tried Thunderbird for news
reading? I've been
>>>> using
>>>> Outlook Express for years for that, it works fine, but I'm
curious if
>>>> it's
>>>> worth the time to try Thunderbird.
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