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GPG “Unusable Public Key” Error

I’m currently working on something which uses GnuPG, an OpenPGP client for encryption. I also use the WinPT GUI for key management because it’s easier and faster than doing it by command line. I had problems encrypting a file to a recipient using their public key, and kept getting this error back from GnuPG:


gpg: (KeyIDHere): There is no indication that this key really belongs to the owner
gpg: C:\testdata.txt: sign+encrypt failed: unusable public key

After playing with GnuPG for awhile, I finally figured out that this key had a trust/validity level of “none” since I hadn’t signed it myself. From WinPT, I just right clicked on the key, then selected sign, selected a trust level, and it was good to go. You can also add an ‘–always-trust’ switch to the GnuPG command as well when encrypting, but it’s not the best idea because of obvious security reasons.

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