[Cryptography] Explaining PK to grandma

Peter Gutmann pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz
Tue Nov 26 18:44:59 EST 2013


Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam at gmail.com> writes:

>How do you explain how the car works to gran? You don't because she never
>thought to ask. All she knows is that you stick liquid in one end and it
>burns to make the engine go. Gran probably thinks that it is some sort of
>steam engine in there.
>
>These explanations are tantamount to explaining to her how a carburetor works
>or the details of the differential.

+1 to all the above.  I've been a bit behind on email recently so you got
there first with a good summary of the problem, but if your secure email
scheme has a step 0 of "explain to granny how secure email works" then you may
as well not bother going to step 1, whatever your step 1 is meant to be.
Secure email has to work like Skype, you install it, you click on "Call
<insert-name-of-grandchild>", and it works.

Peter.


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