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    <center><h2><a href="/about">About</a> | <a href="/about/news">News</a> | <a href="/about/usage">Usage</a> | FAQ | <a href="/about/stats">Stats</a> | <a href="/about/privacy">Privacy</a></h2></center>

    <h3 id="sks-pool"><a href="#sks-pool">Is this server part of the "SKS" pool?</a></h3>

    <p>
        No. The federation model of the SKS pool has various problems in terms
        of reliability, abuse-resistance, privacy, and usability. We might do
        something similar to it, but <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span>
        will never be part of the SKS pool itself.
    </p>

    <h3 id="federation"><a href="#federation">Is keys.openpgp.org federated? Can I help by running an instance?</a></h3>

    <p>
        For the moment, no.
        We do plan to decentralize <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span>
        at some point.
        With multiple servers
        run by independent operators,
        we can hopefully improve the reliability
        of this service even further.
    </p>

    <p>
        Several folks offered to help out
        by "running a Hagrid server instance".
        We very much appreciate the offer,
        but we will probably never have an "open" federation model like SKS,
        where everyone can run an instance and become part of a "pool".
        This is for two reasons:
    </p>
    <ol>
        <li>
            Federation with open participation requires all data to be public.
            This significantly impacts the privacy of our users, because it
            allows anyone to scrape a list of all e-mail addresses.
        </li>
        <li>
            Servers run as a hobby by casual administrators do not meet our
            standards for reliability and performance.
        </li>
    </ol>

    <h3 id="non-email-uids"><a href="#non-email-uids">Why is there no support
            for identities that aren't e-mail addresses?</a></h3>

    <p>
        We require explicit consent to distribute identity information.
        Identities that aren't e-mail addresses, such as pictures or website
        URLs, offer no simple way for us to acquire this consent.
    </p>

    <p>
        Note: Some OpenPGP software creates keys with incorrectly formatted
        e-mail addresses.  These addresses might not be recognized correctly on
        <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span>.
    </p>

    <h3 id="verify-multiple"><a href="#verify-multiple">Can I verify more than
            one key for some e-mail address?</a></h3>

    <p>
        An e-mail address can only be associated with a single key.
        When an address is verified for a new key,
        it will no longer appear in any key
        for which it was previously verified.
        <a href="/about">Non-identity information</a> will still be distributed
        for all keys.
    </p>

    <p>
        This means a search by e-mail address
        will only return a single key,
        not multiple candidates.
        This eliminates an impossible choice for the user
        ("Which key is the right one?"),
        and makes key discovery by e-mail much more convenient.
    </p>

    <h3 id="third-party-signatures"><a href="#third-party-signatures">
            Do you distribute "third party signatures"?</a></h3>

    <p>
        Short answer: No.
    </p>

    <p>
        A "third party signature" is a signature on a key
        that was made by some other key.
        Most commonly,
        those are the signatures produced when "signing someone's key",
        which are the basis for
        the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust" target="_blank">Web of Trust</a>".
        For a number of reasons,
        those signatures are not currently distributed
        via <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span>.
    </p>

    <p>
        The killer reason is <strong>spam</strong>.
        Third party signatures allow attaching arbitrary data to anyone's key,
        and nothing stops a malicious user from
        attaching so many megabytes of bloat to a key
        that it becomes practically unusable.
        Even worse,
        they could attach offensive or illegal content.
    </p>

    <p>
        There are ideas to resolve this issue.
        For example, signatures could be distributed with the signer,
        rather than the signee.
        Alternatively, we could require
        cross-signing by the signee before distribution
        to support a
        <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/caff" target="_blank">caff-style</a>
        workflow.
        If there is enough interest,
        we are open to working with other OpenPGP projects
        on a solution.
    </p>

    <h3 id="no-sign-verified"><a href="#no-sign-verified">Why not sign keys
            after verification?</a></h3>

    <p>
        The <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span> service is meant for key
        distribution and discovery, not as a de-facto CA.  Client implementations
        that want to offer verified communication should rely on their own trust
        model.
    </p>

    <h3 id="revoked-uids"><a href="#revoked-uids">Why are revoked identities not
            distributed as such?</a></h3>

    <p>
        When an OpenPGP key marks one of its identities as revoked, this
        identity should no longer be considered valid for the key.  And this
        information should ideally be distributed to all OpenPGP clients that
        already know about the newly revoked identity.
    </p>
    <p>
        Unfortunately, there is currently no good way to distribute revocations,
        that doesn't also reveal the revoked identity itself.  We don't want to
        distribute revoked identities, so we can't distribute the identity at
        all.
    </p>
    <p>
        There are proposed solutions to this issue, that allow the distribution
        of revocations without also revealing the identity itself.  But so far
        there is no final specification, or support in any OpenPGP software.  We
        hope that a solution will be established in the near future, and will
        add support on <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span> as soon as
        we can.
    </p>

    <h3 id="tor"><a href="#tor">Do you support Tor?</a></h3>

    <p>
        Of course!
        If you have Tor installed,
        you can reach <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span> anonymously
        as an
        <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Onion_services" target="_blank">onion service</a>:
        <br />
        <a href="http://zkaan2xfbuxia2wpf7ofnkbz6r5zdbbvxbunvp5g2iebopbfc4iqmbad.onion">zkaan2xfbuxia2wpf7ofnkbz6r5zdbbvxbunvp5g2iebopbfc4iqmbad.onion</a>
    </p>

    <h3 id="encrypt-verification-emails"><a href="#encrypt-verification-emails">
            Why not encrypt verification e-mails?</a></h3>

    Various reasons:
    <ol>
        <li>It is more complicated, both for our users and for us.</li>
        <li>It doesn't prevent attacks - an attacker gains nothing from
            uploading a key they don't have access to.</li>
        <li>Deletion would still have to be possible even when a key is
            lost.</li>
        <li>It would require a different (and more complicated) mechanism to
            upload keys that can only sign.</li>
    </ol>

    <h3 id="older-gnupg"><a href="#older-gnupg">
      I have trouble updating some keys with GnuPG.  Is there a bug?
    </a></h3>

    <p>
      This is a problem with current versions of GnuPG.  If you attempt to
      update a key from <span class="brand">keys.openpgp.org</span> that
      contains no <a href="/about">identity information</a>, GnuPG will refuse
      to process the key:
    </p>
    <blockquote>
      $ gpg --receive-keys A2604867523C7ED8<br />
      gpg: key A2604867523C7ED8: no user ID
    </blockquote>
    <p>
      We are working with the GnuPG team to resolve this problem.
    </p>
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