Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 July 10

= July 10 =

Nigerian network
For example: In Nigeria there is a network called MTN, do they have any other people to pay before having their service?


 * I shortened your title to a more reasonable length. StuRat (talk) 01:06, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Please i will like to know about this because i have an argument with someone about it, so i want to be sure, And i will like to know, If a call service company e.g MTN, ORANGE, e.t,c have a permanet price to pay monthly or do they pay according to what their costormers uses? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonesvicky (talk • contribs) 01:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * MTN appears to charge per usage, on their "MTN Pulse Plan":, although they mention free calls during "happy hour". StuRat (talk) 19:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I am not sure if I understand your question. But I used MTN in iran (Irancell is an MTN company). And I paid up front (pre-pay) which is more convenient as tourist, but they also offer post-pay options. --helohe (talk)  23:16, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Email encryption
Would it be a big deal if all emails were encrypted? OsmanRF34 (talk) 13:46, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It would put some more load on email clients which would, presumably, be responsible for encrypting & decrypting emails. There would also need to be protocols for sharing and holding key information needed to decrypt communications ... by way of example, if you're using Pretty Good Privacy then you need the public key of the person who you wish to be able to read the email; you cannot send a (useful) encrypted email to that person before you have the key. I suspect the whole business of key exchange would befuddle most users. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:58, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * One could imagine a standard by which all e-mail clients would consult a public key server automatically. You could make it pretty straightforward. But I don't think at this point there's enough interest in such a thing. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:37, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * There's no technical reason that it has to be that big of a deal. But transitioning from the current system to an efficient universal encryption system would be very difficult. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:32, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The reason it's not automated too involves Key Exchange problems. Namely, getting the key of the person you're sending the message to and knowing that it's the correct key. Shadowjams (talk) 22:39, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Couldn't you get the key in the same way you get the email? It can be public information, that wouldn't imply any security risk. Our new emails would be plusanother@wikipedia.org + dofu98q4134njnfgui134yef38jdhfnbha3j3kjdsefhq as public key. However, with encryption in place, gmail wouldn't be able to scan the mail to show advertisings. Plusanother (talk) 23:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The problem is that nothing prevents a malicious party from substituting a different key and transparently re-encrypting any messages that you send with that key—a standard man-in-the-middle attack. You could fetch public keys over an SSL connection, thus relying on SSL's defense against MITM, which is not great but better than nothing. PGP's solution is a "web of trust" where anybody can sign anybody else's key and your trust in a key depends on your trust in the keys that have signed it. But you still need to bootstrap this by securely getting the key of somebody who has signed a lot of other keys. SSH just fetches the key insecurely the first time you connect, caches it, and raises an alarm if it ever changes. It seems to work okay in practice. -- BenRG (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Note in addition there's no way this will be handled by default in any browser so webmail is pretty much out without some sort of plugin, in which case there's limited advantage over a dedicated mail client. (If you're doing it on the server end Plusanother's rationale goes away.) And if your only using IMAP or POP you don't see any advertising anyway even if Google still has the technical ability. Nil Einne (talk) 13:46, 11 July 2012 (UTC)