[Enigmail] Setting trust levels for unknown keys

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 04/29/2009 05:27 PM, Faramir wrote:
> I just fully trust keys I have exchanged by hand in a
> face-to-face meeting, all the other keys are marginally trusted. But
> that's better than "don't know".

This strikes me as an example of the confusion between "calculated
validity" and "ownertrust" that many OpenPGP tools encourage.

Just because I've met "Eve L. Hacker" in person and verified her
identity does *not* mean that i trust her to properly identify other people.

Please do not blindly designate ownertrust simply because you've met
someone face-to-face.  We've all met malicious and/or incompetent people
face-to-face.  It's good to know who the person is ("calculated
validity"), but you should need to know something about their skills,
their presence of mind, their ethical code, and their resistance to
shenanigans in general to decide to trust their certifications
("ownertrust").

Certainly, don't set ownertrust at all for keys to which you have no
calculated validity.  But you may also want to consider setting
ownertrust on a key whose owner you have never met face-to-face in
certain circumstances.  For example:

 * you have full calculated validity to their key already through other
connections in the WoT, and

 * this person has published their keysigning policy, and has an
untarnished public record of holding true to it, and

 * their keysigning policy seems reasonable to you.

Regards,

	--dkg


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