PGP Sigs on the Usenet was: The "find" command

Nonsense. There is absolutely nothing preventing him from posting without the PGP sig. Using a different alias and optional headers and even a different newsserver or three.

Are you helping a troll that has harbutted you and others become a better troll?

The PGP sig doesn't answer that question. At all.

Also, you can easily create a key-pair-sig using any name at all. You can create a bunch of them and have them sign each other's keys.

PGP sigs are uttlerly worthless unless you investigate them thoroughly

Huh? Very few people even do the basic verification for PGP-GPG sigs on the Usenet, for the above reasons, and because they just don't care: They judge people by the quality of their posts.

You could just put a forged PGP sig on it, and the likelihood of anyone noticing would be minimal. And have a sock-puppet come into the thread and say that they checked the sig and it was valid....

Also, someone can create a key-pair using the same name and info easily.

Usually, you have to be a pretty serious butthole for that to happen.

And basically, like I said above, people just don't care. Very, very, few are even going to bother following the evidence chain.

They are for one-on-one situations where verification is really important: Banker, lawyer, Broker, R&D...

And you have to seriously investigate the key involved or it is meaningless.

Usually, a direct SSH connection is used too:

I see a PGP sig on the Usenet and alarm bells start ringing.

Is the OP's real name the one on the public key? buttuming so would be very naive.

Is he posting under several other aliases right here and right now on comp.os.linux.misc? No way to tell.

Is he making someone(s) miserable on other newsgroups using a different alias-newsserver-PGPsig, right now?

Nothing about the PGP sig prevents that.

On the Usenet, they are a JOKE. What you have is someone who is trying to prove that they are trustworthy. Why do they feel-have the need to prove that?

Or want us to believe that?

AC