About six months ago I wrote a post describing how to implement digital signatures in Outlook. Fortunately, it’s easy to turn off!
I’ve spent these last six months in a seemingly never-ending series of conversations with an equally never-ending stream of email partners. Every conversation was around their inability to open my digitally signed email and their frustration with me! Now, I’m NOT the one using “other than the very latest version of Outlook and Exchange”, but I AM the one answering the phone. And I am the one being blamed for the Microsoft and Veritas rush to claim a standard when the simple fact is we [the computing public] are simply not ready for the standard. In building this digital signature “standard” without backward-compatibility (it doesn’t work with AOL, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) they seem to have doomed its eventual acceptance. I’ve often opined that technology thought-leaders owe an obligation to demonstrate technological prowess whenever practicable. It’s for this reason that I suffered for six months. But no more --- I surrender. 
As of today I am turning off my digital signature on outgoing email.
I report this sadly and after having conversations with several other technologists around the country. It seems we’re all coming to the same conclusion. This is a GREAT idea, just not yet. In talking to those representing large businesses I’ve discovered that their surveys showed that customers were not only frustrated by being unable to open a digitally signed email, but that they actually expected that the signature was equivalent to encryption. And we know it’s NOT! So the problem is exacerbated --- recipients get an email that they can’t open. They suspect a virus and delete it. Bad result. They call you for an explanation. Bad result. They DO get it to open and they assume the contents are encrypted. Bad result. Legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes is credited with having said “When you pass the football only three things can happen, and two of them are bad!” In this case only three things can happen and, it seems to me, all three are bad!
gll
By the way --- you can turn it off by going to Tools | Options | Security and unchecking the “Add digital signature to outgoing messages” box.
