Ask HN: If you use keybase.io regularly, for what do you primarily use it?

Shameless plug: I wrote a little guide[1] how to use keybase.io and GPG to sign git commits. It was posted on HN a while ago[2].

  "Ironically, only the first commit is signed."

[1] https://github.com/pstadler/keybase-gpg-github [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12289481

We use it at work to share tmate (https://tmate.io/) sessions. I wrote a shell script to save the session to our mutual shared private keybase directory: https://github.com/sukima/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.bin/tma...

I use it to encrypt messages to friends / customers via Facebook messager, Slack, or public forums when I'm dealing with sensitive data.

A few of my friends use this (which I wrote): http://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/

You may ask, "when do you really deal with sensitive data?" My answer, is a lot more often than you think... The cool part about encryption, is I can use it over an insecure line to communicate. For example, I can post encrypted text here and only people I wrote it for can read it.

I saw keybase.io as a public key directory which makes it easier to find friends, family and colleagues public keys. That´s my intended use of Keybase.io. I haven´t actually used it yet for anything serious, although I´ve found ways to use PGP public/private keys to encrypt and decrypt local files on Mac and Windows, e-mails using mailvelope or keybase.io so that should take care of everything. But if people don´t adopt it I´ve got no use for it. And people around me didn´t take to Keybase as such it´s just sitting there so that maybe eventually I can use it. Right now it´s kind of useless.

At my company we use Keybase to help us validate keys for new employees as we bring them into the fold, since the company is 100% remote. We also use KBFS for some tasks as well. You can see more in the article I wrote for our company blog about our using of GPG + Keybase + Git + Hub for commit signing + KBFS at https://eligible.com/blog/commit-signing-with-git-hub-keybas...

I used it once - to coordinate a project ownership transfer with a person not typically using pgp. Explicit message "this person is XYZ on GitHub" helped.

Sharing secrets with remote co-workers. It's easy enough to use that I can expect pretty much anyone to be able to figure it out in real-time.

Sharing .env files full of secrets to bootstrap a project. Typically just dev credentials, not production, but still a nice way to hand those semi-sensitive data around easily, and without committing them to git.

I use it to sign my git commits.

Never really thought about using it to share credentials but I might give that a try.

Feature Request: I'd love an easier way to find the keybase accounts for my friends on twitter.

I use it as the primary way to exchange secrets with others.

This isn't regular use as I don't regularly have secrets, but I've used it to exchange passwords, 2FA QR codes, and other sensitive data like this, with people with whom I'm remotely communicating with.

We've used it a couple of times recently to share credentials with a remote team.

A run a small app development studio, and have a couple times a month where a client needs to share login credentials to iTunes Connect, Google Play Dev Console, Facebook, etc.

In those situations, I just give them my Keybase public encryption page, and have them enter the credentials and then send me the cypher text. Works fantastic, and much better than just sending via plain text over email or Slack.

Allowing people to verify my message came from me without needing to setup PGP themselves. They can just use /verify and throw my message into it. By using the signature consistently it raises red flags when a post of mine isn't signed or doesn't verify.

Of course - this assumes Keybase has not been compromised, but that isn't an attack vector I worry about.

Offsite backups. I use duplicity to back up my ownCloud servers data directory to my kbfs private directory. There's not a lot of free storage from kbfs, but I don't need much.

[edit] Otherwise, I haven't really found a use for it since setting it up. Would probably be really useful if a tonne of people used PGP, but they don't.

I use it as a simple way to share credentials over insecure channels.

I use keybase.pub to host a whole hugo [1] site. It was very easy to put it together. Updating it is just a hugo + rsync to my keybase public folder.

I also stash some dotfiles in my private folder, and it's extremely handy for sharing signal desktop client safety numbers with other crypto minded friends. I use it for my ssh public keys as well.

I've also used it for snippets with coworkers (secrets or no, it's really nice to be able to sent python /keybase/private/foo,bar/test.py in a chat window, and it can be directly pasted without needing to share the script, or relocate the paths in the command.

I feel like I've naturally developed tons of ways of using it at this point. I'll probably come to depend on it, soon enough.

[1] https://gohugo.io/

My previous company was looking into using it as a place to store the app's public key for that user and find other users of the app (with their public keys) while being able to verify them.

At the time, Keybase didn't have the appropriate APIs to allow third-party integration like that. I haven't checked if anything happened on that front since.

I use it to authenticate and encrypt sensitive messages to friends online, over insecure channels.

It holds my git-signing key. That's all I do with PGP atm.

We use it to distribute public and private key pairs. The aptly-named "public" and "private" folders are quite convenient for such things.

Off topic, but related: I have some keybase invites available, and I'm sure others do as well. Contact info in my profile if anyone would like one.

just discovered it, looks like an interesting attempt to solve exchanging public keys. feels wrong to put public keys in a cloud solution like this---

kbfs is pretty sick but I mainly use it for my git signing key :)