OpenPGPEmailSummit: EmailValidation

Workshop at 2nd OpenPGP Email Summit, Dec 2015 run by Nicolai Josuttis

With this approach we want to establish a quick backward compatible solution to validate email addresses of UIDs of OpenPGP keys.

The key approach is:

• Define a standard signature format to signal successfull email validation
  • The standard format would be:
    • expires after 1 year
    • having a "signature notation" defining when/how/what was validated as JSON value
  • The standard format allows email clients to process them accordingly
    • E.g.: List who validated the email address or prefer validated email addresses over those not validated.
  • But even existing email clients can benefit from them
  • According to the WebOfTrust a user can grant trust (and therefore priority) to emails with specific signatures

• Establish some initial validation servers to perform that validations on request

Key properties of the approach are:

• No change of existing key server infrastructure or protocol
• Existing email clients can use it

Initial Proposal: https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2015-July/053971.html

Slides: attachment:EmailValidation20151207.pdf

Whiteboard 2nd OpenPGP Summit: attachment:Whiteboard_EmailValidation.png