Revoking Old Lost Keys

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I'd like to bring up a problem I haven't seen addressed much yet, and which
I think is going to come up with increasing frequency as PGP use spreads.

The problem is this: how can one spread the word that an old key is no
longer to be used when one no longer has the pass phrase, and cannot
therefore create a revocation certificate?

In my case the problem is medical: thanks to autoimmune problems, I get
random memory loss from time to time. Sometimes it's big - like an entire
semester of my sophomore year of college. Sometimes it's small - like three
old pass phrases. So there are keys of mine floating around the key servers
that I don't want used, and which are just taking up space.

Others will have more mundane problems, like creating a key years ago and
just plain not using it. But as PGP use moves out of essentially pure-geek
communities into the surrounded net.world, accidents and other carelessness
_will_ happen. I'm curious as to what thoughts, if any, y'all have about how
to deal with it.


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Bruce Baugh
bruceab@teleport.com
http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab

Hello,

On Fri, 5 Jan 1996, Bruce Baugh wrote:

> The problem is this: how can one spread the word that an old key is no
> longer to be used when one no longer has the pass phrase, and cannot
> therefore create a revocation certificate?

  If there is someone that you trust (or several people), just make a 
revocation certificate and possibly cut it into pieces, and just let 
those know when to send it out, so that you don't have to rely on a 
faulty memory, and by having it in several hands they can't just send it 
out, as they don't know the other people.  Just a thought.

==========================================================================
James Black (Comp Sci/Comp Eng sophomore)
e-mail: black@eng.usf.edu
http://www.eng.usf.edu/~black/index.html
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
Oscar Wilde 
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