updprefs command and changing key

[Robert Palmer]

During exchange of a public key to a 3rd party - they rejected the key for
not having a compatible cipher; so, after doing some research the key was
edited within gpg to update prefs on the key which now shows a compatible
cipher (in this case, AES-256).  I re-exported the public key and noticed
that the ascii representation was different - this leads me to my question,
which is: is this new key 100% compatible with the old key?  To elaborate,
will previous other 3rd party entities (equipped only with the non-updated
prefs version) still be able to decrypt and accept messages signed with the
new key?  Preliminary testing shows that the updated prefs version encrypted
message is able to be decrypted and signature verified on the non-updated
prefs version keyring system.

 

I am thinking (from preliminary tests) that the "key" information does not
get updated at all - but, somehow, the cipher preferences are embedded in
the public key - hence, the reason that the exported public key ASCII
representation was different before and after updating preferences.

 

Any understanding that someone can add to this would be very much
appreciated.  Thanks.

 

--Robert

 

 

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