Signing your own key

[Brian Minton]

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On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 05:09:13AM +0000, Subba Rao wrote:
> Some of the keys used by several folks for their email, the email client (Mutt)
> says something like "key is good but it is not signed". What is the purpose
> of signing a key? If I were to sign the key, is it applied to the public as well
> as the private key?

signing your public key with itself shows anyone who got the key that nobody
has added userids that are not really you.  When you sign your key, it signs
all of the userids, so anyone who looks at it can tell that those are all
really you.

- -- 
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http://cs.smsu.edu/~minton / PGP key id 0x24B44202     _    _ my favorite OS!
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