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comment by Wintermute
Wintermute  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Remember the Ayyyyyyylmao: Censorship, Fat-Shaming and the Reddit Revolt

I am trying and utterly failing to understand what value is added by cryptographically signing this comment...





mknod  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It is a verification that the user is who they say they are. Or because they'd like to communicate with people using pgp (gpg). Many good reasons. I'd actually like to see it more in online forums.

Wintermute  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I understand all that, but I wouldn't call them "good reasons". It's a throwaway comment that has absolutely no extra weight no matter who says it.

Unless you have reason to believe that Hubski's security has been breached and someone is impersonating you it's needless and distracting. And even if he did believe that, this seems to be the only comment that DarkLinkXXXX has ever signed, so we still wouldn't know that it's the original DarkLinkXXXX based on this one signature.

DarkLinkXXXX  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    it's needless and distracting.

I do agree it's distracting. That's why I relegated the signature into a paste in a pastebin, linked to at the bottom of my comment as I usually do.

    this seems to be the only comment that DarkLinkXXXX has ever signed

See: All my comments since a couple days ago..

    Unless you have reason to believe that Hubski's security has been breached and someone is impersonating you

Do I need a reason? I used to have some fun being a script-kiddie by dumping SQL tables, and there's a lot of vulnerable sites out there. Not to say that this site might be vulnerable, but the nice thing here is that I don't have to trust the admins of any website to keep your online identity secure.

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DarkLinkXXXX  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I do agree very much agree, but there's only one problem with this: it's too many steps!

First, I have to copy-paste my comment and sign it. Then I have to put it in a pastebin, copy the url, and then link it in the comment below. That's simply too many steps for most people.

Though, I am optimistic about keybase maybe making a secure API to make the process easier.

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camarillobrillo  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think it's neat.

kleinbl00  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...see, I was puzzled by that too but I am not good with computer. However, if not even an AI can figure it out...

briandmyers  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Since (AFAICS) he hasn't provided his public key anywhere, with which we could verify this message, then it's meaningless (as I understand PGP/GPG).

If he did so, then we could tell if any leet haxors had twisted his words behind his back - if we bothered to check, which we of course would not.

user-inactivated  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The comment links to keybase, and his public key is there. Not that that makes it any less pointless, but for what it's worth if you want to copy and paste his comment, remove the leading whitespace, and fix where the markup has mangled the signature, you can satisfy yourself that this comment was written by DarkLinkXXXX and no other.

briandmyers  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Aha. I visited the site, but didn't see any user-info links; but when I put his hubski-username into the search-box, his profile and key did pop up.

syzo  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not only that, Hubski's markup makes the stuff in between plus characters bold. So you could still theoretically verify, but it would be a pain in the ass.

Also, it's just distracting from the rest of the comments.

DarkLinkXXXX  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree. That's why I moved my signature to an unmangled pastebin link. ;)

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