Experimentation and musings on using S/MIME with internationalized email addresses.
Lately I have been exploring a little the territory of internationalized email, and doing some S/MIME experimentation in that area, just for fun and curiosity. It has been a partly intriguing, partly exasperating experience, and below I share some travel notes.
Are you one of the few people in the world (relatively speaking) with a non-ASCII email address (say François.Noë[email protected]) and have been thinking about protecting your email with S/MIME? Maybe you should think again. It is theoretically possible, but in practice it is very hard. I advise you to let it go, at least for now (January 2025).