gpg - difference --encrypt-to and --recipient

[Stefan Claas]

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 11:56:27 -0900, justina colmena via Gnupg-users wrote:
> On January 1, 2019 4:13:43 PM AKST, MFPA <2017-r3sgs86x8e-lists-groups at riseup.net> wrote:

> >With hidden-recipient or hidden-encrypt-to or throw-keyids, it is
> >clear how many keys were encrypted to, but the key IDs and user-IDs
> >are not present.  
> I am not terribly comfortable with this situation. It almost seems rather creepy to me to receive an encrypted
> message that is also encrypted for the benefit or verification of one or more unknown and unidentified third parties.
> I start suspecting things like a foreign government mandated key escrow or secret government backdoor on behalf of
> some foreign spy or law enforcement agency.

When you receive a message which is also encrypted to hidden recipients you will see that
in GnuPG, when decrypting the message. It shows additional info of how many keys the
message was encrypted to, with key ids showing in the form of ID 0000000000000000.

So nothing to worry! This very good feature was probably implemented many moons ago
for users of Mixmaster.

Regards
Stefan