User id's without person's name, only email

Andrew Gallagher andrewg at andrewg.com
Tue Nov 16 18:06:02 CET 2021


On Tue, 2021-11-16 at 18:20 +0200, Teemu Likonen wrote:
> Am I seeing a starting trend here? Do some people think that it is
> better practice to have only have email address as user id? What
> might be their reason? Or maybe it's not a trend and doesn't mean
> anything. I got curious anyway. Add your speculation. :-)

When selecting a key for either encryption or verification purposes,
only the email address part is meaningful. "John Smith
<jsmith at example.com>" and "John David Smith (work email)
<jsmith at example.com>" are functionally equivalent. The "Real Name" and
"Comment" portions of the userID are mere conventions and, if you have
an address book, entirely redundant.

It is reasonable therefore to take the view that the non-email portion
of a userID is cruft at best (and an unnecessary leakage of personal
information at worst).

A
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