"Patrick Brunschwig" <patrick@enig...> wrote in message
news:mailman.218.1335343814.99783.enigmail@mozd......
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> On 25.04.12 05:43, Papo wrote:
>> Hello.  Am I correct in saying that I cannot save a pending
>> message as an encrypted one unless the "From" field has an Identity
>> with a user that has been configured already to use Enigmail
>> OpenPGP support? I ask because I thought I should be able to
>> encrypt without signing for any recipient regardless of the
>> sender's ID, but that appears not to be the case. After all,
>> encryption is based on the recipient, not on the sender. So,
>> apparently I cannot have an on-the-fly "From" header for a message
>> and save it, even temporarily, as encrypted, although it would also
>> seem to me that this might be allowed if my configuration options
>> included encrypting to self.  Am I missing something? Thanks.
>
> That's correct. By design of the OpenPGP standard any encrypted
> message is encrypted to someone specifically (i.e. an email address or
> an OpenPGP key). "Self" is in nothing else than a specific email
> address or key ID that Enigmail adds. In other words, you need to tell
> Enigmail a key ID or email address for "self", which is done via the
> Account/Identity settings.
>

Hello, Patrick.  It appears as if I may not have explained myself well
because I am not understanding how the responses pertain to my situation,
and perhaps my including the idea of self has further confused the issue.
Let me try again.

If I am composing a message to send to someone, and if I want to save the
message temporarily before actually sending it, it would seem to me that I
ought to be able to encrypt the draft of the pending message to the
recipient's key, assuming it is on my keyring of course, provided I have put
the recipient's name in the "To" field indicating to whom the message should
be encrypted. However, I am finding that this alone is not sufficient
instructions for Enigmail. Rather, it expects that I also have put a user ID
in the "From" field as well, and this ID has to be one, moreover, who has
been configured already to use OpenPGP in Enigmail's settings.

So, even though this user ID in the From field is irrelevant for purposes of
identifying the encryption key, Enigmail requires it to be included. Why is
that? (I am using the latest version of Enigmail on in TB 11.0.1 on Windows
OS.)  Thanks.


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