why there is nothing like a “verified checkmark” for E-Mails of real companies like PayPal to distinguish their E-Mails from scams

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why there is nothing like a “verified checkmark” for E-Mails of real companies like PayPal to distinguish their E-Mails from scams

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Email started as basic service: English only, text only. Extensions were made to add other languages, to add images, and to add encryption and message signing.

Message signing is what you are asking for here.

Unfortunately encryption upset the US NSA no end. The US via the Wassenaar Arrangement pushed hard for the ban of encryption technologies in email. It won for a time, and then lost. Which is why you can encrypt 3mail today.

But at the vital moment when the small number of email clients (eg Pine) exploded into hundreds of apps, encryption wasn’t a feature. So it didn’t became part of the default offering of Netscape Communicator or later products like Microsoft Outlook. Unlike other features like vacation messages, or threading, or footers.

This means that emails are not signed by default. And so you can’t check the origin of a email easily. The NSA hasn’t been held to account for the huge financial losses its decision to slow the spread of encryption cost the US in spam and scams.

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