Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: m3rk on July 12, 2013, 08:05 pm
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When messaging a vendor, I pull their encryption key off their profile and save the key in the program. Then I write my message, and it generates an encrypted message when I encrypt it. When I said this message, do I need to include a key of my own, or do they send it back using the same key on their profile?
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If you want the vendor to reply with an encrypted message, then yes, they will need your public key.
If the vendor replies with a message encrypted with the vendor's public key, you will not be able to decrypt it (because you won't [hopefully!] have the vendor's private key and key password).
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Also, you only need to encrypt sensitive info, not every message. It wastes vendors' time if they have to decrypt a lot of messages that don't need to be encrypted in the first place.
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Exactly, at the most basic level, your address is about the only thing you need to encrypt with a vendor. You use their public key to do so.
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Also, you only need to encrypt sensitive info, not every message. It wastes vendors' time if they have to decrypt a lot of messages that don't need to be encrypted in the first place.
I wish more buyers understood this. PGP should be for the bare essentials.
The real irony here is that most buyers who yell at you for not encrypting their responses are the ones that never sent you their public key in the first place, and are also usually asking you a question that can be answered on your vendor page to boot!