For those of you not familiar with PGP, it is an extremely popular (and free) encryption solution that is used by both individuals and businesses. While PGP has recently celebrated is fifteenth birthday, Phil Zimmerman, the developer of PGP, had some pretty interesting things to say about the Internet.

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Strong encryption used to be viewed as something ‘dodgy’, prompting the question: “what are you trying to hide”. Now firms are legally required to encrypt data or risk falling foul of information disclosure laws and corporate governance regulations,

Zimmermann says PGP has been “more successful than I first envisioned”, even though email encryption technology is less commonplace than many pundits predicted in the late 1990s.

The internet has moved on a great deal in the last 15 years and not always been for the best, he says. “The internet has gone from been a gentleman’s club for academics to something fiendishly hostile. It’s changed from something like a university campus to downtown Bagdad,” he told The Register.[more]

Tags: Computer Protection