uhh, like.. isn’t the point of installing this firefox extension so it can do the encryption/decryption at your end? what are you talking about “gmail sends plaintext back to your pc from santa clara?” gmail never sees your private key, and it never sees anything but an encrypted message… so how does it get plaintext?

and as far as the NSA paranoia is concerned, well.. it’s valid I guess *if you’re trying to hide your email from the NSA.*

I’m not.

I’m trying to secure it from identity thieves and lesser, albeit malicious, entities than the NSA.

Leroy: is having your friends perceive you as “dorky” of greater concern to you than your privacy and your identity?

Encryption is not “looked down upon by everyone except geeks.” It may be in your world, but this is the first I heard of it.

And encryption is not just used by people who have some “secret” to hide as you’ve implied. In fact it’s used probably a lot more than you know. If you think the NSA is looking into everyone who’s sending around encrypted messages then you’re naive.