E-mail encryption with FREE certificate

Hi, I've just discovered this interesting offering from DOCOMO:

The only caveat, compared to Thawte's WoT which came way of Dodo:

It does not verify persona.

So, what it's good for, and what - not?
It's still attractive for those who want to play without pay. I believe this case covers 90% or more, however sad that may sound.
It's also good for personal authentication as long as you know that:
(1) e-mail address belongs to an identified person (say, your friend whose e-mail you can positively identify from your previous transactions)
AND
(2) that it's really your friend who's gotten that free DOCOMO offer first.

Because even though your friend still may have access to his e-mail box, so may the bad guy have. And it's not hard for that bad guy to jump first and get that certificate, and peruse it for his deceptive purposes.
There is no persona verification, nobody goes to WoT notary with his passport and another photo Id, so whoever gets that certificate, and has access to the e-mail box (with no SSL used and abundance of free open WiFi it's not hard to do) - can positively forge his identity and make you believe that you are communicating over encrypted channel to your trusted partner.

In other words, "better than nothing", but "nothing for some".
Try it, use it, message me...

Note: did not work in Opera 10.10 (PC), had to use IE

AOL fixes Sent Items

There's hope to AOL.

They have finally fixed the long-standing, pesky issue with sent e-mails, which they "managed" even for IMAP accounts, by placing them into "Sent" folder.
While that was quite OK for web clients, this functionality posed a problem for signed/encrypted mail, as well as duplication of saved sent e-mails.

I wrote to AOL earlier last year and later in October and 3 months later (today) they do the fix. Hurray!

Hello,
there are some issues in your e-mail service.
More specifically, digitally-signed e-mails become "tampered with" in status, as they are automatically moved BY YOUR SYSTEM (not my e-mail client) into Sent Folder.
I am including one of many such e-mails in attachments.

It is also of note that I previously contacted you about this "auto copy" functionality - this feature is completely unneded on IMAP interface, as most IMAP e-mail client programs are able to perform this on their own.
It is exactly this feature that causes also troubles with signed and encrypted e-mails as I described in first paragraph.

In case you need more info/descriptions, please connect me to developers/admins.
I am a system engineering architect myself, in telecom.

Thank you.

And the response team strikes back:

Dear cubeover,

If you access your email using third party software, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, please read this important message.

We want to inform you of a change to our email infrastructure that will result in copies of sent emails no longer being automatically placed in your Sent folder when sent via third party email software, as of Tuesday, February 2, 2010.

In order for you to continue having your sent emails automatically placed in your Sent folder on February 2, 2010 or later, you will need to make a change in your email software settings no later than February 1, 2010. Please note that you will not be required to enter your AOL login and password as part of this process.

Below are links to help articles on how to update the settings for the most common email software

Outlook 2007

Outlook 2002/2003

Outlook Express

Thunderbird for Windows and Mac

Mail on Mac OS X

Please make the necessary updates as soon as possible.

The infrastructure change we are making will only affect email sent through third party email software. Email sent using AOL software (AOL 9.0, 9.1, 9.5, Desktop), AOL webmail, or a mobile device such as a Blackberry or iPhone will continue to have copies of sent email placed in the Sent folder.

Thank you for using AOL Mail.

Regards,
The AOL Mail Team

I can only add that of all times I tried to ask Yahoo! Mail team for similar fixes (mostly related to handling of international char encodings), none succeeded.
I got usual third-world support banter instead, and promptly decided to close my Y! account, few years ago.