This is widely off topic, I know...
Aryeh Gregor wrote:
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:51 AM, Tim Starling
<tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Private keys can be compromised by anyone with a
whim and a few
thousand dollars, either physically by compromise of the device, or
remotely by social engineering or zero-day exploit. Key signing
parties are premised on the idea that private keys are really private.
Since they aren't, the additional security of a real-life meeting is
somewhat farcical.
Moreover, what's to stop someone from showing up and claiming to be
you? How are you going to confirm that -- by their telling you
they're coming and what they look like, over the Internet? Why don't
they just sign your keys over the Internet and skip the middle-man?
Not to be negative or anything, sorry. (I'm not even going to be there.)
Personally (even though I don't have tattoos) I think I
could give details of myself that would be somewhat
difficult to forge on short notice. The index finger of
my right hand sports a completely healed up lack
of nail. That is to say my index finger has a shrunken
leathery surface where usually there would be a nail.
my left wrist on the backside also has three round
scars, where I have burnt them with various cigarettes
and cigars, in a roughly belt of Orion pattern, and my
chin has a prominent scar on the underside from when
I jumped into the pool as a child, backwards, taking a
seriously too short a step :-D ( I cringe every time I hear
the famous quote by John Glenn :-) This story benefits
from me mentioning that after the cranial shock of
nearly dislocating my head from my neck, I subsequently
promptly ran head first into a window that was open, and
just managed to ignore the presence of, giving me a much
more short lived scar on my forehead as well.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen