[cap-talk] On the importance of being "untrusted" - let's be clear

[Jed at Webstart]

At 10:44 AM 3/3/2005, Karp, Alan H wrote:
>Dean Tribble wrote:
>
> > Though better than "untrusted", giving instructions to the user seems
> > inappropriate.  If I get mail from my brother, it seems
> > presumptious to
> > tell me to treat him as a stranger just because your software doesn't
> > recognize him.
> >
>If you get mail supposedly from your brother, but the certificate
>doesn't correspond to the one you used to establish a petname for him,
>you'd better treat him as the stranger who might be spoofing you.

Of course I'm not sure exactly what Dean was referring to with his example, but
I can easily imagine a situation where I'm looking at "received" email through
a Web interface to a site that I haven't named but where the mail itself
can be positively identified by me (e.g. with a PGP/GPG signature).

The Web site itself is simply "unnamed."  Trying to anticipate all situations
seems to me rather futile.  As I noted previously it might be that the web site
itself is referenced in a link from a named and trusted site.  It might well
be trusted though unnamed.

--Jed http://www.webstart.com/jed/