[Cryptography] Debunking the "SMTP TLS "s a mess" myth.

[Peter Gutmann]

Viktor Dukhovni <cryptography at dukhovni.org> writes:

>The fraction of SMTP traffic that's encrypted in transit (between
>organizations over the public Internet) may be larger than the corresponding
>metric for HTTP.
>
>    https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/
>
>(TL;DR as observed by Gmail, varying by weekday, 84-87% outbound, 76--80%
>inbound).  Opportunistic TLS does a rather decent job of defending most
>traffic against passive wiretap.

And that is an important (if depressing) data point: If you want to encrypt
email, you use STARTTLS, not S/MIME or PGP.

Peter.