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Kleopatra: certifications by available secret key which is *not* set to "ultimate" owner trust are disregarded
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Description

When you import a secret key and answer the dialog widow with "No, its not my key", the owner trust will be set to unknown instead of ultimate.
If you then try to certify another key with it, it can be selected and the certify button is functional:

The only thing unusual for the user is the "is this your own key?" question.

When you click "Certify" you'll get the message that the certification was done.

But the certified public key isn't shown as certified in the certificate list aka keyring:


Although it is certified by the key in question, as can be seen in the certificate details.

Only after you set the ownertrust of that key to "ultimate" the certificate will be shown as "certified".

This is surprising for users ("I have signed that key, why is it not shown as certified?").

Edit 2025-08-19:
Is this what we want? -> yes
I can imagine that one would want to handle it this way (= to not trust the certifications of a shared key marked "not my own") but then I wonder if certification with it should not be allowed in Kleopatra, either.
-> should continue to be allowed

More documentation to explain this would be good, in any case -> this will be explained in the team-key documentation

The only things TODO for this ticket:

  • Change the question "Is this your own key?" to "Are you the only user of this secret key?"
  • Change the button-text "Change owner trust" to "Yes, I am the only user "

This matches the desired wording for T7502: Kleopatra: Import secret key dialog improvement, please work on both tasks together.

Event Timeline

ebo triaged this task as Normal priority.May 2 2025, 3:21 PM
ebo created this task.
ebo renamed this task from Draft: Kleopatra: certifications by available secret key which is *not* set to "ultimate" owner trust are disregarded to Kleopatra: certifications by available secret key which is *not* set to "ultimate" owner trust are disregarded .Tue, Aug 19, 3:42 PM
ebo updated the task description. (Show Details)