multiple e-mail addresses: what are the solutions?

[David Shaw]

On Feb 21, 2009, at 7:16 PM, gerry_lowry (alliston ontario canada)  
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> in my first attempts at PGP, I had only one e-mail at time,  
> occasionally
> two or three.
>
> Now I have many different e-mail addresses that I use on a regular  
> basis
> for various purposes, none of them illegal.  Some web sites force  
> users
> to have addresses like    me at theirdomain.com   for reasons such as
> attempting to control spam.
>
> Examples:
>
> I have a gmail account for communication with my IPP if my site is  
> down.
> If my IPP is also down, I'm out of luck.
>
> I have an e-mail address from a customer who prefers that his
> customers contact me via gerry at hiscompany.com.
>
> et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
>
> Please note:  I'm for all intents and purposes new to PGP/GPG.
>
> It seems that for any e-mail address that I have, I need a key pair  
> that
> corresponds to each e-mail address.

That is one way to do it.  The other way is to have a single keypair  
with multiple email addresses on it (using the --edit-key menu and  
"adduid" you can add as many addresses are you like to a key).  And  
then there is a blend of the two methods where you have more than one  
keypair, each with some of the email addresses on it.

Which method you want to do with depends on what you're trying to  
accomplish, and how you like to manage keys.  There is no one right  
answer here - it's very much a matter of taste.

Personally, I like to use a different key for each overall purpose  
(i.e. one key for $day_job, one key for personal and open-source  
work), but again this is just what I like.

David