Revoke a key - What is with the decrypted messages?

David Shaw dshaw at jabberwocky.com
Fri Nov 23 22:09:02 CET 2007


> On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, David Shaw wrote:
>   . . .
> >  . . .         Revoking the key only
> > stops new use of the key - old messages are still okay.

On Fri, Nov 23, 2007 at 03:14:29PM -0500, reynt0 wrote:
> Just a maybe picky question:
> Does "stops new use" mean absolutely, like mechanical
> prevention, stops new use, or does it mean something like
> "stops by a social process", ie like knowledgeable users
> won't use it anymore?

Both, really.  It's a social process in that a revocation just adds a
note to a key that says "don't use this".  It's mechanical in the
sense that all OpenPGP software respects this flag, so the user
doesn't get consulted about it.

David



More information about the Gnupg-users mailing list