I, like just about everyone else that actively sends email to other people, have been bitten by the latest worm floating around. It fits the pattern of most other recent worms, in that it sends itself to everyone in the victim’s address book with the return address of someone else in the address book. I used to never be bitten by these things, but I’ve sent a lot more email to people I don’t know since I started my job search, and now they’re sending out email that looks like it’s from me. I assume this is the case because for job applications I use an email address that I haven’t used much before, and all of the returned email is coming to that address. Anyway, today I’m looking into what it takes to digitally sign all your email. That way, people who know me will know that any email you get from me that really is from me is signed. I have friends who have done this for years, but I’ve never bothered. Now I’ve had it. I just have to figure out which email signing protocol can be used within Thunderbird and will be accepted by the other popular email clients (mainly Outlook).

Update: right now I’m experimenting with PGP, or GPG as it’s known these days. You can find my public key here.