Any way to find email address associated with PGP key? I forgot friend's email addy..

[BustaBust]

Is there any way to do a reverse lookup with a PGP key to find the email address associated with it? I lost my friend's email address and don't have it any more, but have his public PGP key. We use PGP to exchange ideas that would normally need an NDA and as you may have gathered, and as my question may hint towards, I am not to versed in PGP security and how it works. Not sure if there is even any info attached at the PGP key/server level.

Any help works, and thank you.

 

[Savatar]

Is there any way to do a reverse lookup with a PGP key to find the email address associated with it? I lost my friend's email address and don't have it any more, but have his public PGP key. We use PGP to exchange ideas that would normally need an NDA and as you may have gathered, and as my question may hint towards, I am not to versed in PGP security and how it works. Not sure if there is even any info attached at the PGP key/server level.

Any help works, and thank you.

Yes, you can do this... and it's pretty simple!

Install GPG (or gpg4win). Open Kleopatra and import the public key. The associated email address(es) will display right next to the newly imported key in Key Manager.

You can also do this from command line: http://www.macfreek.nl/memory/Analysing_PGP_Identities

Take care!

 

[BustaBust]

Thanks a lot Savatar!

 

[Savatar]

No problem!

The one downside to this is that spammers have been known to harvest email addresses from keys on public key servers. So, if you ever publish your key, keep that in mind. There's not really any good workaround for that except to use spam filters (you could, perhaps, register the key to a dummy email address,... but then that defeats the purpose of publishing the key in the first place - as it makes it harder for legitimate people to know where to send the message).