Though, strictly speaking, it shouldn't really be necessary.
Maybe I don't want every ISP between you and me knowing which non-profits I choose to donate to.
In general, emails should be encrypted unless there's a very good reason to leave them in cleartext.
Fair point. I was thinking more along the lines of security, but privacy needs to be respected as well. I'm all for using PGP/GPG as much as possible, but it's not for everyone. It took us a while in the company to figure out the best way to setup enigmail for maximizing the convenience factor while still keeping most of our operations encrypted.
For this particular donation drive, at least the security is not reduced by foregoing email encryption.
On that note, a quick story that seems quite relevant to the above and
recent Bitcoin news:
About a year ago I wanted to order a 1 oz gold coin from Coinabul. It was about $1,500 worth of BTC. When I went to checkout, I noticed the website wasn't using SSL. Yet, I was supposed to send my $1,500 to the address their server sent me without any crypto. I emailed them asking to either make sure SSL was enabled, or at least send me a verification of the address through encrypted email. The response I got was "
That's fairly small so I wouldn't worry too much as long as you trust your ISP/connection on your end.
My response was not friendly. I guess $1,500 is "fairly small" for him, but it isn't small for everyone. And it's not a good excuse to run a precious metals site without basic web security. I ended up ordering elsewhere, and I'm glad I did because it sounds like I wouldn't have gotten my gold coin...