How to Retrieve a Public Key

Public key cryptography is the business and government standard for the exchange of secure documents and messages. However, when a user does not personally give you their public key or you cannot find their key in your keyring, it is impossible to establish secure communications with them. Usually, you can search on your own company's keyserver for a co-worker or business contact's public key, but sometimes that will not yield results. Since public key cryptography relies on a public key being well distributed for security, you can often search for and find user's public keys on public keyservers.

• 1

  Open another window or tab in your Web browser and navigate to a public keyserver's Web interface (see Resources).

• 2

  Enter the user's name, email address or hexadecimal key ID into the text-entry field.

• 3

  Select either "Index" or "Verbose Index" from the radial button options.

• 4

  Click "Search" and wait while the server finds all keys matching your search query.

• 5

  Click any provided links to see the ASCII or text version of the entry's public key.