user ID creation

Harald Katzer HarriKa at gmx.de
Tue Jul 8 10:05:03 CEST 2003


Hello GnuPG developers,

I would like to suggest some enhancemants to the generation of user IDs, the 
key pairs base upon.
According to the RFC 2440 "OpenPGP Message Format", which states in chapter 
5.11. "User ID Packet", that "there are no restrictions on its [the UID's] 
content", I propose to offer the GnuPG users two types of UID!

The first type should be an anonymous UID, that contains only a nickname and 
optionally some comment. The generated key pair could be trusted via the 
web-of-trust (WOT) scheme and used on anonymous discussion boards, like those 
already being used in freenet and hopefully soon become popular in GNUnet.

The second type of UID is similar to the one already used, with the only 
difference, that it should offer the users some more features for validating 
the indentity of the secret-key owner. I think the UID should optionally 
contain:

- e-mail adress (ok, we already have it for communication and WOT validation)
- the favorite keyserver used by the owner of the user ID (validating via WOT)
- domain name (could be validated via IANA database)
- official phone number (to be found in a phone book)

I hope these suggestions will give GnuPG some versatility, so that users can 
derive wider benefit from it.
I am grateful for any remark,

best regards,

Harald





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