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Comment by Ayesh | Hacker News Reader

But why?

All SSH/GPG private keys will be in the same storage anyway, and it doesn't provide any security advantage in case a key is compromised. They are already computationally impossible to brute Force too.

Isn't the point of GPG keys is to have an established trust? How does using multiple keys help with it?

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The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are.

Privacy. I don't want my professional identity muddled with my personal identity.

My work laptop is owned by my company. All company work goes on there. (And since it's a company-owned resource anything made using it is something they could claim rights to.)

My personal computer is owned by me. Nothing company owned touches it.

This makes domain separation easier.

Even with keys tied to machines and not just people, it’s convenient to have distinct meta data (name or email) associated with projects or directories.

It’s an easy way to prevent accidentally your FOSS contributions or projects with your $WORK email address.

The keys have a User ID packet with a userId field that contains a name and email address, which is an identity. I prefer to keep my identities separate from one another. For me it's not necessarily about security, it's more so about compartmentalization.

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