Those of you using end-to-end encryption on your emails, how did you persuade non-techy people you correspond with to do things on their end?

[meganl@mas.to]

Those of you using end-to-end encryption on your emails, how did you persuade non-techy people you correspond with to do things on their end? And how did you teach them how?

I really would like to do more E2E, but I'm stumped by this. I'd not only have to teach myself, but all the folks I email with... #AskFedi

[d_rift@beige.party]

@meganL I've never had luck. I can get people to switch to Proton sometimes, at which point it's all behind the scenes, but actually sitting down and using encryption? Nobody seems to care. To the point where my manual PGP setup is... somewhere; I have no idea which backup. Haven't used it in a decade.

[greenpete@sunny.garden]

@meganL I gave up using encrypted e-mails, only tech people I'd never meet used it too.
I have luck getting friends and family onto Matrix though.

[meganl@mas.to]

@greenpete I've had some limited success getting folks on Signal.

But so many folks I correspond with have Gmail addresses and it feels like it defeats the purpose of me trying to move myself off Gmail...

[greenpete@sunny.garden]

@meganL I refuse to communicate with anyone via gmail.
I'm not having my personal data scraped by that vile corp'.
Yes, I do make my life harder...

[only_ohm@mas.to]

@meganL @d_rift

Likewise: I've had PGP set up on my own e-mail clients for about 20 years, but no-one wants to play. The newer E2EE messaging apps like Signal and Threema seem to get more takers.

[tuban_muzuru@beige.party]

@meganL

How did I persuade people? Demonstrated how easily MS Outlook can be hacked.

[claudius@darmstadt.social]

@meganL I, ultimately, did not. I had a PGP or GPG key for over 25 years. I mentioned this to people, I offered to help set this up. When I took up teaching I had my key ID on my slides alongside my email address, in the first session I would point out that encrypted communication was possible.

The number of encrypted emails I received is laughable. Most of it was from Facebook (they would send encrypted notifications to you, if you configured it). Followed by a small number of test emails.

[claudius@darmstadt.social]

@meganL the amount of *real* encrypted communication via email is probably a single digit number.

So, frankly, I gave up on it a couple of years ago. If people want to contact me, they need to get Signal. I know it's not a perfect solution, but it works leaps and bounds better than encrypted email.

[claudius@darmstadt.social]

@meganL oh and for a number of years I would sign all my outgoing emails, attaching my public key, of course. Nobody cared.

[modulux@node.isonomia.net]

@meganL I didn't manage either. Though if you can convince people to use thunderbird, it's never been easier. It has built-in support for both OpenPGP and S/MIME, in a pretty user-friendly way.

[nateb@mastodon.thenewoil.org]

@meganL Never had luck. I also don't communicate over email a lot. I've been pretty successful getting people on Signal (mostly thanks to my wife). I tell people why they should use Proton (or Tuta but Proton is the easier sell, tbh), but I have no idea if they follow up. Probably not.