Just a thought here. I'm still new to this cryptography thing, taking it seriously, have read through the FAQ and the past week or so of posts here. I just got a copy of PGP tonight, and on reading through the manual, something leaped out at me: electronic signature validation. If your private key acts as validation for a message, then what you have is an electronic signature that could be verified, and thus you could sign a contract online; you're snet the contract in email, you attach your private-key signature to it and email it back, and voila, you've entered into a contractual agreement that would stand up in court. Has there been a test case of this? Are there any lawyers or other legal types on this echo that could give an opinion on the validity of this idea? Or has this issue been discussed before? Andrew *5