Re: Second verification scam Fwd: A Text Message Mess

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: ", Flora" <http://www.state.vt.us/~Flora.>
 > Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2015 21:32:14 +0000
 >
 > Text messaged are never encrypted?

Actually, they are supposed to be encrypted from your phone to your phone
service provider.  But, (1) IIRC the encryption was broken ('tho, I don't
think it's common for it to be decrypted by Joe User) and (2) the NSA has
long been able to decrypt the messages (not that the NSA would care about
getting into your Google account).

Also, I think, once it leaves your phone service provider, there's no
guarantee that the message will remain encrypted.

 > Do you know if all emails are encrypted?

Definitely not.  You have to adopt great pain to make email encrypted.

And, gmail, by default, does not encrypt anything, except the data that
goes directly from your computer to the Google servers and between the
Google servers.  Once it leaves Google, it's completely unencrypted.

 > If 
 > they aren't, how do we know?

Unless you encrypt them using various plugins in your email client (e.g.,
Thunderbird) or via apps on your smart phone or via gmail plugins (I think
these work through the browser, e.g., Firefox), you have to assume that
the email is not encrypted.

What's more, for public key encryption, the receiver must be
encryption-enabled.  For example, if you were to have an email client
which did send encrypted email and you were to add my public GnuPG key to
your keyring and you enabled encryption, anything you send to me would be
encrypted for my eyes only.  (I've been trying to get everybody to use
encryption all the time for years, but nobody I know does.)  But, if you
don't have a public key, then I cannot possibly send encrypted email to
you.

 > On Jul 1, 2015, at 4:28 PM, "robert" <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert> wrote:
 > >> From: Flora  <http://www.gmail.com/~flora>
 > >> Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2015 15:52:17 -0400
 > >> 
 > >> Don't let this happen to you if you have a second verification method. 
 > > 
 > > Good point.  Do not trust the caller ID of senders of SMS/text messages.
 > > And, I would add: always assume that whatever you send via text message is
 > > readable by everybody.  (I doubt that there will ever be an encrypted
 > > version of SMS.)