[NA-Discuss] Conversation with Dave Piscitello

[Brendler, Beau]

Consumer education is indeed a difficult and frustrating process.

My hope would be to focus on the first part of the excerpted comment
from Bret:

"So I see a real need to get apps in the hands of users that can handle
security in an easy, transparent way..."

Sometimes this is a better approach, perhaps involving consumers at the
"front end," than creating something in isolation, then expecting
consumers to learn how to "properly" use it.

-----Original Message-----
From: John L [mailto:johnl at iecc.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 9:23 AM
To: Bret Fausett
Cc: Brendler, Beau; NA Discuss
Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Conversation with Dave Piscitello


> So I see a real need to get apps in the hands of users that can handle
> security in an easy, transparent way and then to educate users about 
> what the technology is, what it means to them, and how to use it.

I agree, but this has been a problem for at least a decade; S/MIME has 
been around that long, most but as you note not all mail clients handle 
it, and how many people use it?  Not many.  This is particularly 
discouraging since S/MIME has been supported for many years in popular 
programs including Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird, and the 
support is good, once you're configured, it's at most one click to sign
or 
validate a message.  If after all this time Blackberry doesn't find
S/MIME 
work handling, it shows how little mindshare it's got.

Given the long and discouraging history of efforts to get people to use 
computers more securely, before the ALAC jumps down this rathole I would

want to understand why we think we could succeed where so many have
failed 
in the past.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be,
http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please",
said Tom, revealingly.

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