signing a robot's key - was: Re: Global Directory signatures

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On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, David Shaw wrote:

> Both GnuPG and PGP do more or less the same thing here.  You can import 
> keys freely, but such keys will remain invalid until there is a valid 
> trust path to the key.  Invalid keys are usable, but you get some 
> variation of the "are you sure?" message before you can use the key.
====================

i don't recall PGP(tm) having the option of "are you sure" for an unsigned 
key, but i didn't spend much time with it. i was left with the impression 
that the key couldn't be used unless it had a signature.


> If there is no valid trust path to the key, and you want to make it 
> valid (say, if you want to trust signatures issued by it, as in the case 
> of the GD key), then you need to sign or locally sign the key yourself. 
> PGP's "Sign" command actually defaults to local signing. You need to 
> make an explicit action (check a check box) to make it a regular 
> exportable signature.  Note that I'm speaking about PGP 8 here, though I 
> seem to recall that PGP 7 was the same.
=====================

one can also use edit-key and assign ultimate trust to a key, which will 
make it trusted without a signature.


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