Newbie: Choosing a user ID questions

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Sunday 01 February 2004 04:21, Atom 'Smasher' wrote:
> i would argue that it's not a good thing to leave the email address
> out of a key (but it *is* a good question to ask).

Leaving the email address out of the key makes sense for certification 
keys, i. e. key which are exclusively used to sign other keys. For keys 
which are used to sign messages and for keys which should be used for 
encryption this doesn't make sense.

> here's one reason why <name-NOSPAM at address.com> won't work... pine
> (and other MUAs?) determines which key to encode to using the email
> address. so, if i send mail to <name at address.com> but the key is for
> <name-NOSPAM at address.com> i'll get an error telling me that it can't
> find a matching key.

In this case KMail asks which key should be used and, optionally, it 
remembers the choice of the user so that he won't be asked again when 
sending an encrypted message to the same address. Additionally 
automatic encryption of messages to recipients for which there is an 
OpenPGP key will then work even with email addresses that are not 
listed in the OpenPGP key.

> basically, what the MUA wants to do is send the message through:
> 	gpg --sign --encrypt --recipient name at address.com

What will the MUA do in case two or more keys correspond to 
name at address.com? A good MUA will pass the key id instead of the user 
id to gpg to specify the recipients.

Regards,
Ingo
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