The disadvantages of online KSP

C. D. Rok cedar at 3web.net
Sun Dec 26 00:36:29 CET 2004


Ben Branders wrote:

 > ...
> But then again, you can never know for sure that someone is an imposter or
> not. There are a lot of people who share exactly the same name. Even if
> you check their identity in real life, one of them can mislead you...
> ...

What the whole GPG WOT needs is the definition of "the user": an
assumption that a user (of any computer system) has a one-to-one
relationship to a living organism of Homo Sapiens kind is naive and
never works well in practice. In the absence of such definition it
is perfectly reasonable to use whatever definition seems "right" to
you under the circumstances. Signing a key of someone who you don't
know but who has presented you with a piece of paper you have no way
of authenticating is certainly no better or worse than signing a key
of someone whom you have met and conversed with online.

C Rok




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