User:HighInBC/Mediawiki e-mail enchancement
Idea to allow for confirmation of e-mails while still retaining privacy.
Sending the e-mail
[edit]When an e-mail is sent via Wikipedia from one user to another the following occurs:
- A MD5 sum of the sending and receiving user names along with the timestamp is created
- A MD5 sum of the content, sending, receiving username and timestamp of the message is created
- Both MD5's are sent along with the e-mail to the recipient
- Both MD5's are logged by the Mediawiki server
Authenticating the e-mail
[edit]If someone wanted to prove they had received an e-mail or sent an e-mail they could prove it in the following manner:
To prove that the e-mail was merely sent
[edit]To prove that the e-mail was sent you would:
- Go to a tool page that allows you to enter the contents of the header, the username of the sender and the receiver and the timestamp.
- This tool will put that together in the same was the send e-mail function does and create an MD5
- It will create a link that contains the information from the headers as well as the MD5
- When you follow the link it will repeat the same information that is in the url to you
- If the MD5 is in the log it will state "Confirmed" at the bottom in green
- If the MD5 is not in the log it will state "Invalid".
This method reveals only the headers, proving only that the Wikipedia interface was used by one user to send an e-mail to another at a certain time.
To prove the contents of the e-mail
[edit]To prove the contents of an e-mail you go to a tool page the same as the other one and enter the header info, but also paste the contents of everything after the header of the e-mail into it and it will calculate the MD5 and show confirmed or invalid.
One could post the contents on wiki or forward it to someone via e-mail and they would be able to go to this page and authenticate it was actually sent.
The contents of the e-mail are too long to send in a url, but the header info can be sent in the url that goes to a form you can put the contents into.
The separation
[edit]I have separated the headers and the content in case one might wish to show that they are indeed receiving e-mails from a person but choose not to divulge the contents.
Precautions
[edit]I have intentionally left the senders e-mail out of this scheme, it should not be used in authenticating the headers or the content.
Advantages
[edit]This allows for people to send and receive e-mails privately while given both the sender and the receiver the ability to authenticate that this really happened.
This allows you to detect spoofed e-mail that was not really sent by Wikipedia.
Disadvantages
[edit]The e-mail contents could not be redacted or changed in any way or it would not pass authentication. This may prevent authentication of e-mails with sensitive information.