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Re: Is there a Win PGP?



On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, William H. Geiger III wrote:
> In <[email protected]>, on 11/06/96 at 11:24 PM,
>    [email protected] said:
> 
> >For commercial applications,
> >you probably also need ViaCrypt anyway.  It was a nice product before they added Key
> >Escrow support.  Now that Phil has bought them, they'll presumably return to
> >political correctness on that issue.
> 
> Hmmm I don't think they actually had a Key Escrow Support. My understanding was that
> the user could create a master key that could be used to decrypt messages from the
> 
> Does anyone know if you can purchace a commercial license from ViaCrypt/PGP Inc. but
> use the standard PGP for commercial purposes?
>
> William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii

PGP Inc. (http://www.pgp.com/) is now marketing Viacrypt PGP.
 There are two packages, Viacrypt PGP Personal Edition which is PGP, like we 
all know and love. PE also is available as DOS, MS-Windows, Mac, and UNIX. So 
Viacrypt PGP/PE for DOS should feel similar if not identical to MIT's PGP, 
though I haven't tested it yet.
 You could license IDEA single-license and license RSAREF for commerical 
usage (http://www.consensus.com/ or [email protected]), but why 
bother?
 They also have a Business Edition which supports key escrowing, not some 
US government backdoor, but a 'master key' for businesses to recover 
encrypted information if an employee forgets a passphase (which they do), 
dies (which they do, if the information is very important), is on 
vacation (sometimes it happens), etc.
 In a commerical environment, key escrowing is for data recovery, not for 
spying on employees. If you want to use your employer's email system for 
your personal email, then use a personal public key. 

 -Michael