<h2><em>#4</em> Learn the Web of Trust</h2>
<p>Email encryption is a powerful technology, but it has a weakness; it requires a way to verify that a person's public key is actually theirs. Otherwise, there would be no way to stop an attacker from making an email address with your friend's name, creating keys to go with it and impersonating your friend. That's why the free software programmers that developed email encryption created keysigning and the Web of Trust.</p>
-<p>When you sign someone's key, you are publicly saying that you trust that it belongs to them and not an impostor. People who use your public key can see who has signed it. Once you've used GnuPG for a long time, you may have hundreds of signatures. The Web of Trust is the constellation of all GnuPG users, connected to each other by chains of trust expressed through signatures, forming a giant network. The more signatures of people you trust a key has, the more trustworthy that key is.</p>
+<p>When you sign someone's key, you are publicly saying that you trust that it belongs to them and not an impostor. Signing keys and messages is the same type mathematical operation, but they carry very different implications. It's a good practice to generally sign your email, but if you casually sign people's keys, you may accidently end up vouching for the identity of an imposter. People who use your public key can see who has signed it. Once you've used GnuPG for a long time, you may have hundreds of signatures. The Web of Trust is a constellation of GnuPG users, connected to each other by chains of trust expressed through signatures. The more signatures of people you trust a key has, the more trustworthy that key is.</p>
<h3>Identifying keys: Fingerprints and IDs</h3>
<p>People's public keys are usually identified by their key fingerprint, which is a string of digits like F357AA1A5B1FA42CFD9FE52A9FF2194CC09A61E8 (for Edward's key). You can see the fingerprint for your public key, and other public keys saved on your computer, by going to Enigmail → Key Management in your email program's menu, then right clicking on the key and choosing Key Properties. It's good practice to share your fingerprint wherever you share your email address, so that people can double-check that they have the correct public key when they download yours from a keyserver.</p>
-<p>You may also see public keys referred to by their key ID, which is simply the last 8 digits of the fingerprint, like C09A61E8 for Edward. The key ID is visible directly from the Key Management window. This key ID is like a person's first name (it is a useful shorthand but may not be unique to a given key), whereas the fingerprint actually identifies the key uniquely without the possibility of confusion. If you only have the key ID, you can still look up the key (as well as its fingerprint), like you did in Step 3, but if multiple options appear, you'll need the fingerprint of the person to whom you are trying to communicate to verify which one to use.</p>
+<p class="notes">You may also see public keys referred to by their key ID, which is simply the last 8 digits of the fingerprint, like C09A61E8 for Edward. The key ID is visible directly from the Key Management window. This key ID is like a person's first name (it is a useful shorthand but may not be unique to a given key), whereas the fingerprint actually identifies the key uniquely without the possibility of confusion. If you only have the key ID, you can still look up the key (as well as its fingerprint), like you did in Step 3, but if multiple options appear, you'll need the fingerprint of the person to whom you are trying to communicate to verify which one to use.</p>
</div><!-- End .main -->
</div><!-- End #step-sign_real_keys .step-->
<div class="main">
<h3><em>Important:</em> check people's identification before signing their keys</h3>
<p>Before signing a real person's key, always make sure it actually belongs to them, and that they are who they say they are. Ask them to show you their ID (unless you trust them very highly) and their public key fingerprint -- not just the shorter public key ID, which could refer to another key as well. In Enigmail, answer honestly in the window that pops up and asks "How carefully have you verified that the key you are about to sign actually belongs to the person(s) named above?".</p>
+
+ <!-- ~~~~~~~~~ Troubleshooting ~~~~~~~~~ -->
+ <div class="troubleshooting">
+ <h4>Advanced</h4>
+ <dl>
+ <dt>Encrypt messages from the command line</dt>
+ <dd>Unfortunately, trust does not spread between users the way many people think <a href="http://fennetic.net/irc/finney.org/~hal/web_of_trust.html">many people think</a>. One of best ways to strengthen the GnuPG community is to properly <a href="https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/x334.html">understand</a> the web of trust and to carefully sign as many people's keys as <a href="http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html">circumstances</a> permit.</dd>
+ </dl>
+ </div><!-- /.troubleshooting -->
</div><!-- End .main -->
+
</div><!-- End #step-sign_real_keys .step-->
<div>
<div id="copyright">
<h4><a href="https://u.fsf.org/ys"><img alt="Free Software Foundation" src="//static.fsf.org/nosvn/enc-dev0/img/fsf-logo.png" /></a></h4>
- <p>Copyright © 2014 <a href="https://u.fsf.org/ys">Free Software Foundation</a>, Inc. <a href="https://my.fsf.org/donate/privacypolicy.html">Privacy Policy</a>. <a href="https://u.fsf.org/yr">Join.</a></p>
+ <p>Copyright © 2014
-2015 <a href="https://u.fsf.org/ys">Free Software Foundation</a>, Inc. <a href="https://my.fsf.org/donate/privacypolicy.html">Privacy Policy</a>. <a href="https://u.fsf.org/yr">Join.</a></p>
<p><em><a href="http://agpl.fsf.org/emailselfdefense.fsf.org/edward/CURRENT/edward.tar.gz">Source code of Edward reply bot by Josh Drake <zamnedix@gnu.org> available under the GNU General Public License.</a></em></p>
<p>The images on this page are under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (or later version)</a>, and the rest of it is under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license (or later version)</a>. — <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OtherLicenses">Why these licenses?</a></p>
<p>Download the source package for <a href="emailselfdefense_source.zip">this guide</a>. Fonts used in the guide & infographic: <a href="https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Dosis">Dosis</a> by Pablo Impallari, <a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Signika">Signika</a> by Anna Giedryś, <a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Archivo+Narrow">Archivo Narrow</a> by Omnibus-Type, <a href="http://www.thegopherarchive.com/gopher-files-hacks-pxl2000-119351.htm">PXL-2000</a> by Florian Cramer.</p>
projects / enc.git / blobdiff