Changing email addresses

Dave Chapeskie gnupg@ddm.wox.org
Thu Nov 22 21:03:02 2001


Hi Ben,

On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 06:42:14AM -0500, Ben Logan wrote:
> I read the GnuPG Privacy Handbook, and decided I should revoke the
> signature on my key with the "revsig" command.  Then I added a user id
> with the "adduid" command (using my new email addr) and re-exported
> the key to the keyserver.  My old uid was "Ben Logan
> <blogan@newcreature.org>" and my new one is "Ben Logan
> <ben@wblogan.net>".
> 
> Did I do the right thing?

My understanding is that this is the preferred method.  The only other
alternative that I'm aware of is to completely revoke the key and
generate a completely new key.  I think there are many benefits to using
new UIDs instead of new keys.

The only problem is that some OpenPGP implementations don't handle
UID self-signature revocations "correctly".  The issues I've seen can
be worked around with only minor efforts by the users of the "broken"
implementations.

GnuPG, however, does a good job with self-signature revocations so you
shouldn't have to worry about it.

> Thanks,
> Ben
> 
> -- 
> Ben Logan: ben at wblogan dot net
> OpenPGP Key KeyID: A1ADD1F0

-- 
Dave Chapeskie <dchapes@ddm.wox.org>
OpenPGP Key ID: 0x3D2B6B34