154334 - Save "preferres encrypted mail" for addressbook-entry

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Address Book & Contacts, enhancement)

Description

[Marcus Münch]

This is a request for enhancement in Mozilla's address book and mail client:
I use S/MIME certs and Enigmail GPG signing and encryption when sending mails
via Mozilla. As only a few receipients have PKCS #1 certs or GPG keys, so my
default seetings are not to require encryption when sending mail. But it would
be great if it where possible to set "preferres encrypted mail" for any
individual address book entry in equivalent to "preferres html mail / plain text
mail" to override the global setting "don't encrypt mail by default".

Comment 1

[Henrik Lynggaard Hansen]

I confirm this bug, as it is a valid request.

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

mass re-assign.

Comment 3

[Ralf Hauser]

A variant of this would be http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=225436

Comment 4

[Malcolm Rowe]

*** Bug 233053 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 238289 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Jon]

This RFE is valid, but I belive a more logical approach would be a global (rather than per addressbook entry) option to automatically encrypt messages IF a public key for the recipient is available. Simply having a public key for the recipient indicates the recipient can recieve encrypted mail (otherwise, why would we have the key?), so there's no good reason *not* to encrypt it. This would allow users to not require outgoing mail to be encrypted (and continue to communicate with people who don't have certificates), while still automatically encrypting everything that *can* be.

Comment 7

[Andrew Brown]

(In reply to comment #6)
> so there's no good reason *not* to encrypt it.

I disagree. S/MIME poses a lot of complication. Some recipients might have different keys for different computers (annoying, but possible) or may have a key on only one computer. Forcing encryption on anyone with a key is not a safe generalization.

I like Jon's idea of having it as a general setting - much easier than being *required* to set per recipient rules for *everybody*, but this should be a separate RFE rather than a replacement. Per recipient override rules are still highly important. S/MIME is unfortunately just still too complicated and inconsistently implemented anywhere to safely rely on general settings. Doing so would make it impractical to rely on.

I argue for all the S/MIME related settings to be consolidated in a per-recipient panel as in <A HREF="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=269414">269414</A>.