hi! thank you for you help. i am reading about the web of trust now, and it works. note that the error message is misleading, however. ps: i tried to use gnupg2 but these didn't seem to have any effect: # cat .mew.el | grep gpg2 (setq mew-prog-pgp "/opt/local/bin/gpg2") (setq mew-prog-gpg "/opt/local/bin/gpg2") i wonder why..