On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 2:24 PM, shm...@riseup.net <shm...@riseup.net> wrote: > what are the factors involved in creating such discrepancies with folks' > public key lengths ?
As far as I can tell, the two major factors that affect the size of public keys are: 1. Key length. (That is, a 4096-bit key will be larger than a 2048-bit or 1024-bit key.) 2. Number of signatures on the key. A brand-new key will be considerably shorter than one that has accumulated numerous signatures from other people. > are public, private, and key pairs in general stronger/safer (what ever > that may mean) if observing their public keys are many monitors high or > have they gone to extreme measures in something in particular ? Key length does have an effect on security: 2048-bit keys are larger and harder to brute-force than 1024-bit keys. The same applies to 3072 and 4096-bit keys compared to 2048-bit ones, though there is a point of diminishing returns. -- Pete Stephenson _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
