Sean Heeger's MyPGP© Site FAQ (Est. March, 15th 2004)
This is an active FAQ with questions answered daily. Hit ctrl-f to search. (47k) Only you and your contacts can derail preying eyes! | The Fourth Amendment Not sure if you will get the .Mobi domain for your mobile phone? Get a MyPGP.Com address now! Show the world you are a security concious individual! Call (312) 242-1691 to obtain a great online name.
A. MyPGP.Com is my personal site that I share with other privacy and security conscious internet users. It list information on my current projects, my public PGP keys as well as information to outside sources that are relevant to the subjects of e-mail, data security and privacy. At this point it is non-commercial in nature. - top A. It is commonly known in the Internet and Computer security world as Pretty Good Privacy. - top Q. what is PGP and how does it work? A. Click this link to learn what it is and how it works. - top Q. When was MyPGP.Com created? A. MyPGP was created on March 11, 2004 - top A. Follow this link to learn more. - top Q. Is your MyPGP.Com affiliated with any other companies? A. As big business may try to have you think otherwise, the answer to that is no. Professional affiliations do not exist with any other companies. However, there may be links to other sites that may be viewed as relative to subjects that are included on MyPGP.Com. - top Q. Can I get a MyPGP.Com web and e-mail address? A. Yes! They're distributed on a case by case basis. All addresses that will be provisioned will be subject to an Acceptable Use Policy that users will be required to agree to. - top Q. Can I get a whole DNS Zone? A. You sure can. In the third level. More information is located here. - top Q. What are some ideas for naming my DNS zone? A. Your physical address would be a good one to start with. Your license plate number, phone number, a nic name, your full name, your last name, a first name, anything short and meaningful to you. Use your imagination! - top Q. I want a zone that contains a trademarked name. A. If you are the "Well Known" trademark name holder, you can get one with your mark in the string. You will need to provide proof that you own the mark as I want no self imposed confusions with any other companies. Even though the ICANN UDRP doesn't apply to names in the third level, I would see it very confusing and possibly misleading to visitors if a "Well Known" trademarked string were used as a sub-domain if you were not the owner of the mark. Also, If you would like to consult with me regarding online Intellectual property rights, feel free to contact me at my address. Keep in mind that I am NOT a lawyer... Also keep in mind that if you are a second-level domain registrant yourself, having a confusingly similar web site and domain is a good way to get URDP'd. See also RDNH. Did I mention that I own WipoWatch.Org? :-) - top Q. Can I get reverse pointers for my DNS Zone(s)? A. Yes. I will assist you in accomplishing this through your upstream provider or ISP. If needed, I can also provide secondary and tertiary DNS services. - top Q. Can I store my public key on your site? A. Not at this time as I currently don't have a public pgp key server. I would recommend either setting up an account and storing your public key at Biglumber.com or using the PGP Global Directory. - top A. Yes. We will need to meet in person in order for me to validate your identity. I can sign any public PGP key as well as provide assurances for Thawte Freemail and CACert.Org certs. For more info you can visit TrustedNotary.Com FAQ. - top Q. Would you be interested in selling MyPGP.Com? A. No. Not at this time as I currently don't sell my personal domains. However, since I've had offers to transfer it to other parties for an excessive amount of money ($XX,XXX.XX), and it is currently not against my AUP for others to solicit offers to transfer my domains to them. All are welcome to inquire and provide an offer for it as this helps me assess the value of my site and other qualities that I may not be aware of. I can be contacted regarding this domain using my public key. Please keep in mind that it would be impractical for me to transfer it at this time since users will start using the web and e-mail addresses on march 25th. Who knows what the future will bring? - top Q. What software should I use to secure my e-mail and data? A. In my opinion any meritorious non-commercial open source software will be fine in securing your data. I personally use and recommend Mozilla Thunderbird, GnuPG and Enigmail. These programs work great in securing my e-mail and in signing other users public keys as well as providing a great internet e-mail experience. I also use GPGShell in order to bring everything together as far as managing my keys an configurations. Another thing is that If you are interested in encrypting your hard drive, you're in luck. There is a free application that I use to secure my laptops and towers. As for securing my instant messenger I use two methods. One is x.509 certificates with AOL IM and the other is IM Secure. Click here to learn more about great disk encryption software. - top Q. Do you have a Public Key ring? A. Yes. It's here if you want to view it or retrieve any keys. - top Q. Can you assist us in securing our organization? A. I'd be happy to help. But I would like to know more about what type of security you are interested in. Since "Security" is a process and not a product, we will need to sit down and discuss your concerns in detail either by secure e-mail, IM or snail mail. Just send me a request for service and I'll make arrangements to meet with you. - top Q. I need an SSL Web Server Certificate. Can you help me obtain one for my new e-commerce site? A. Most definitely as it's what I do among many things in the field of Information Technology. You can hit any one of the banners at TrustedNotary.Com to get the ball rolling. Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions. - top Q. What is your mailing address? A. All correspondence can be sent to 2043 Elm St. Quincy, IL 62301. - top Q. I heard you were a musician. Where is your music? A. Point your web browser to Music.Heeger.Org. I have some pretty interesting opinions there as well so brace yourself. - top Q. What other services do you offer? A. Visit the NeighborhoodNET FAQ. There's a lot of good info for most people who are interested in what I may have to offer professionally. I'm always looking for good honest clients to work for. I'm not necessarily looking for clients that pay great. Rather, those that are truly open minded and have great personalities. - top S. I saw your name on Scams.Net. Looks like you're a moderator. That's cool! R. I think it's cool too and on top of it an honor! The operator of Scams.Net nominated me as moderator as a result of my personal contributions to the site. No cronyism or nepotism here! But at the same time, I have no special interest in the site as I'm committed to being open, fair and transparent to other outside communities on the network. For example. If you were to make me a moderator of your anti-scam message board, I would provide the same performance and integrity to your board as I do his. - top Q. Does your PGP site have a history? A. It sure does. You can use the Way Back machine at archive.org to check it out. There is a link on the front page at the bottom for your convenience. - top Q. What is your current PGP key, ID and Fingerprint? A. The short key ID is 0x234E1077. The long Key ID is 0xA87D36F6234E1077. The Fingerprint is 4E6B 910E C9EB 3BFB F3DE DB41 A87D 36F6 234E 1077. Ya gotta love fingerprints! I know the CSI's do. - top Q. What is a Thawte Web Of Trust Notary? A. Here's a link to the Thawte Web Of Trust page. It gives a thorough explanation about the web of trust. - top Q. What is the Gossamer Spider Web of Trust? A. Here is the about page for the GSWoT. - top Q. I noticed that you're a CACert.Org Assurer. What is that? A. Check out their site. It has a lot of good info regarding their free digital certificates and assurer program. - top Q. When you send e-mail to others what e-mail server does it come from? A. xbox.spatialrift.com - 64.146.111.237. Anything else would be a spoof. Here are some links to e-mail information and other sources. SPF Log | Abuse | E Notice | File Attachments - top Q. I want to trust the Adobe PDF files that we exchange with you. Do you have a certificate that we can download? A. You sure can. It's located right here. - top Q. Do you communicate with others through an Instant messenger service? A. Yes. My ICQ number is 1240176. My advice to you also is to grab a copy of Trillian since it will allow you to connect to all IM systems with only one IM client. It will save you in system resources. - top Q. Do you disclose users personal information to third parties without their consent? A. No. - top Q. Hey! I'd like to send you a small donation for your time and efforts. How can I get it to you? A. Thanks! Nice to know the network isn't totally full of freeloaders and egomaniacs. To top that off, you are showing everyone that I have earned your respect for my work. Here's what you can do. You can send whatever will make you feel better to my home address or paypal. My paypal e-mail address that payments are sent to is postmaster at mypgp.com. If for some reason that e-mail addy doesn't work, send it to service at neighborhoodnet.net. Thanks again friend! - top Q. I want to host my web site with you and your organization. What do I need to change my name server info on my domain to in order to accomplish this? A. Until the MyPGP.Com name servers are enabled, you can use xbox.spatialrift.com and enforcer.spatialrift.com as the new name server information for your domain to point to. The MyPGP.Com name servers will be brutally fast and more efficient than anything that I have ever owned. You'll be even more pleased when I switch you over to them. They'll be named something like ns.mypgp.com, etc. - top Q. We have a VPN that we need to get trusted. Can you trust our endpoints as well as our routers? A. Yes, I can verify things very easily on your network and sign your certificates if everything checks out. Not a problem. - top Q. Is there a message board for your site? A. Not at the moment. I personally wouldn't object to opening a thread (now open) on Scams.Net for MyPGP.Com. There's a lot of useful information on internet scams and other info regarding e-mail issues on their message board. I post and moderate there quite a bit. - top Q. What steps have you taken to promote your site? A. Word of mouth, non-commercial e-mail and meta tags are really the only things that I've done at this point. Also having a short, meaningful and memorable domain name isn't a bad thing. - top Q. Can we have an e-mail server that only accepts encrypted e-mail? A. Yes. It's just a question of configuring filters on your new server. You can also have a Unique Root domain name system as an added layer of security and authentication within your wide area network. You'll need to run your own DNS and e-mail server within your organization to accomplish this. - top Q. Are you a Wikipedia user or contributor? A. My username is seanheeger and my User ID is 6059397. You might see me editing and contributing to privacy related subjects. The wikipedia is the best publicly edited encyclopedia out here! - top Q. Is privacy software hard to use? A. First, see how 'Privacy Software' is defined. Public Key Infrastructure and its alternatives would be good place for you start in answering this question yourself. For the reason being that I don't have an insight to you as a person on what is easy and what is hard to do. You may have to experiment a little with different methods of cryptography and have a moderate interest in the subject to really answer this question. It would also help for you to not to give up too quickly while learning the curves. I'm sorry about this being a 'self help' type of answer. But at this point I think it's a good one for you and others to lean into. Q. What audience are you targeting with this site? A. I'm targeting anyone who is interested in becoming privacy software users, becoming more visible on the internet as privacy software users through the use of meaningful web and e-mail addressing and those who would like to know more about privacy software through the use of this site. All are welcome! - top A. Yes. It list software to use in order to secure your data as well as providing help on running your own trusted DNS and E-mail servers from your business or home location. This information is something that your computer company or ISP definitely wants to keep away from you and at the same time wants to sell to you. - top Q. Does this site list a collection of personal information? A. This site list only public information. Listing personal information would be a bad thing. I don't disclose personal information about people who employ me. That is if I end up with their personal information for some reason. - top Q. What does PGP have to do with DNS or E-Mail? A. There is no direct correlation between PGP, DNS and E-Mail other than they are used collectively on the Network for communication purposes. They are brought together by this site in the form of personal web addressing and e-mail services for security conscious users. This is my attempt at being original and exercising responsible experimentation as well as providing a proof of concept on the public network. Some of the advantages of combining and implementing these elements are included here. - top Q. Do you have any good links to cryptography resources? A. Big lumber has the best collection of links to cryptography resources. - top Q. You said that you visited our site. How can we verify that it was really you? A. If your web site keeps logs. I'll show up as Sean Heeger - MyPGP.Com as my web browser user agent and it will come from the IP address range 64.146.111.234 - .238. Sometimes I use Insight Broadband and my reverse pointer will contain the insightbb.com domain- top Q. Why can't I have any expectations of privacy while I'm online? A. You have the same expectation of privacy online as you do when you're physically outside, on the street, in your car or in plain sight. The good news is that you can take it upon yourself, which is the only way, to obtain online privacy. This site and others explain how to obtain it. - top Q. If I use e-mail encryption won't it set off some sort of alarm? A. To my knowledge there is no "tripwire" or other type of software notification device that will tell on you for using e-mail encryption. Even if there was a known system or network trying to snoop in on you for using it, the fact is that it wouldn't matter. Your data will be safe while in transit. However, if you live outside the United States there might be a political problem. That problem would be caused by your government or employer suddenly losing the ability to read your messages. I wouldn't worry otherwise. My advice would be to hook up to a secure proxy server that resides in the US as this will assure you that no others will be able to read your data traffic. Have your colleagues do the same. As a quick note: If one were to want to screen for pgp signed or encrypted e-mail, the solution would be pretty simple. An e-mail filter rule would need to be set up on a mail server to look for the "BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE" or "BEGIN PGP MESSAGE" text string within the body of a message. That filter rule (once activated) could be set up to send an administrative alert to any e-mail address in regards to that message passing through the system. The filter rule could also be set up to delete your secured mail.- top Q. Are there any advertisements on MyPGP.Com? A. I guess that would depend on who you ask. The word "advertisement" is defined by webster as "to make something known". I will say that there are no unsolicited advertisements. If you click a link on my site, it will take you to a site that 1.) I personally own and operate. 2.) that is along the lines of what this site represents. If you are offended by a link being present, which I know a lot of people are because everyone wants to call the next guy that could possibly make money online a spammer, please leave my site and don't come back. As final note to this question...If you came to my site through a personal e-mail I sent you, it was because I singled you out as an individual with a common interest. I invited you and offered you the choice to visit my site and actually learn something with no expectation of any financial compensation in return. - top Q. Your site seems a little political. Are you anti-government? A. As a natural born american citizen, I believe that everyone has the right to a good stable government. Such as the one we had from '92 to 2000. I believe that our current administration has a lot of self-inflicted shame-based issues as well as guilt in committing privacy and freedom destroying acts against its citizens. As a result, I choose to point the truthful issues out when asked or I feel the need to voluntarily do so. If bringing those issues out on my site or when I'm in your presence leads you to believe that I am anti-government, so be it. I can't control the way anyone thinks. If I could and did, I would be no better than those, namely the current administration that wants to control the way you think. You could say that I'm a Less Government - More People kinda guy. - top Q. Is it possible to include an image of myself in my public pgp key? A. Your key manager allows you to insert an image into your key. I would advise watermarking it before adding one to it. As always, feel free to contact me if you need assistance. - top Q. What are the advantages in running my own e-mail server from home or my office? A. Many! Though you'll have one big advantage. You control every aspect of how your e-mail, as well as the others that you may provide mail services for, is sent and received. You have the OPTION of keeping logs and have the RIGHT not to disclose those logs (if kept) to outside non-trusted parties. Other advantages include and are not limited to generating and running a dns blacklist, blocking offensive IP address ranges, enforcing mailbox and file size attachment policies, acceptable use policy notifications and enforcement, and billing for your outsourcing clients. You can also block or rename questionable file attachments. - top Q. What is RIPEMD-160 and why do you use it for hashing? Here is the Wikipedia on RIPEMD-160. I use it because I feel it is much better than SHA-1 . - top Q. What do you use to transfer files? A. For small files I use e-mail. 1 Meg is the limit. For large files I use IM, FTP, YouSendIt.Com, and Filetopia. - top Q. Won't people think that I have something to hide if I take part in any privacy actions? A. They sure will. But that's the whole purpose of using any form of privacy action. To have privacy! If they have a problem with your communications tactics, there is a process that they can go through to possibly obtain your private information. There are also processes you can implement to stop them as well. You can go round and round all day about this. Anyone can say you have something to hide, even after a long day at work when you come home and close the door behind you. So I guess if people can no longer see you in your house after you walk in and shut the door, you must have something to hide! - top Q. Would your consulting services make a difference in the Mark Foley case? A. Most definitely. There would be questions answered as to the authentication of the evidence that has been brought against him or anyone else for that matter. All I would be concerned about is the evidence; not the people involved. in this case I'm neither democratic or republican. - top Q. How effective is PGP/GPG software? A. If used properly and that all physical security measures are taken to protect your private key ring, it's hands down 100% effective. Listen to this episode of security now to hear Steve and Leo discuss pgp, gpg and ISP privacy. - top
"Security breach? It's no big deal until it happens to you."
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