Key Server (cryptographic) - Privacy Concerns

Privacy Concerns

For many individuals, the purpose of using cryptography is to obtain a higher level of privacy in personal interactions and relationships. It has been pointed out that allowing a public key to be uploaded in a key server when using decentralized web of trust based cryptographic systems, like PGP, may reveal a good deal of information that an individual may wish to have kept private. Since PGP relies on signatures on an individual's public key to determine the authenticity of that key, potential relationships can be revealed by analyzing the signers of a given key. In this way, models of entire social networks can be developed.