[MlMt] Warn sending encrypted mail about unencrypted subject

[Gary Hull]

One solution would be to silently accept the entered subject, but then 
replace it with something like "Encrypted Email - PGP," or something 
more "cryptic" (no pun intended) while moving the subject to the first 
line of the email like this:

Subject: My username is spandex1, passwd is pqowiefjpoiqwerfpoiqjhwef

and then inserting a double return and encrypting the resulting 
content-with-subject as usual.

But I think most people know that the sender and receiver and the date 
sent and the general size of the email are going to be revealed to 
anyone who intercepts it, and the subject is also in that group. But it 
probably really shouldn't be.

The password program 1Password encrypts its database, of course, but it 
does so by leaving each record title in plaintext and encrypting the 
rest of the record. Since most people title their 1Password records with 
the name of the service or website and perhaps even their usernames, a 
lot of meta data is exposed and lot of your internet usage patterns are 
exposed.

On 17 Jul 2014, at 0:36, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 16 Jul 2014, at 15:41, Brad Knowles wrote:
>
>> ISTR that some clients will auto-replace the unencrypted subject line 
>> with the contents of the encrypted subject (and other headers), once 
>> the message is decrypted.  And going the other way, they will put in 
>> a placeholder like "Encrypted subject" into the envelope subject 
>> line, which should get replaced on the other end when the message 
>> gets decrypted.
>>
>> Was it mutt or elm that did this?  Don't remember -- it's been way 
>> too long.
>
> Well, let me know if you find a reference to some kind of 
> standard/documentation. It's not of much use if MailMate can encrypt 
> subjects while receiving email clients cannot decrypt them. For 
> example, MailMate never decrypts subject lines…
>
> -- 
> Benny
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