> The big block of alphanumeric characters you see is a public key to
> share with others with their private key. I am a physicist and do alot
> of international correspondance with scientists and others where secure
> communications is the only viable method of honest un-corrupted
> communications. I have changed my .signature file save the key as an
> attachment.
Two more secure and more courteous ways to make your public key available
are 1) to post it to a key server, and 2) to post it on your web page.
#1 has the advantage that many people who use GPG or PGP have their mail
readers set up to check a key server for new keys. So once your public key
has hit multiple key servers (they trade keys from time to time), reading
your mail becomes much easier. You can and should make the fingerprint and
size available on your web page or .plan so that a correspondent can
verify what he gets from the key server. (Something I have not done.)
#2 is easy if you already have a web page, but does require manual
intervention by your correspondents.
As for the courtesy aspect, this lets you have a signature closer to the
customary three to five lines commonly accepted as a reasonable signature
size. Anything larger than that is considered rude because it is a waste
of bandwith and disk space.
We in the West are accustomed to inexpensive hard drives and fast modems
or T1 lines. However, having worked with correspondents in Mumbai, I am
very much aware that they have 9600 baud modems, terrible phone lines, and
minimal storage by western standards, when they have electricity at
all. We would all do well to bear that in mind.
Thanks for your consideration.
Also, BTW, thanks for your recent useful and courteous posts to the
list. I'm glad you didn't leave after the verbal thrashings I and several
others gave you.
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