> where the affected users might be surprised or alarmed to learn that it is possible to link these real-world identities.
I feel like it's obvious that ssh public keys publically identifies me, and if I don't want that, I can make different keys for different sites.
> I feel like it's obvious that ssh public keys publically identifies me, and if I don't want that, I can make different keys for different sites.
You're probably not the only one for whom it's obvious, but it appears to be not at all obvious to large numbers of users.
You can try it yourself [0] returns all the keys you send and even shows you your github username if one of the keys is used there.
[0] ssh whoami.filippo.io
"Did you know that ssh sends all your public keys to any server it tries to authenticate to?"
It should be may send, because in the majority of cases it does not in fact send all your public keys.
This is just an awfully designed feature, is all.
Are you AI?
You can wildcard match hosts in ssh config. You generally have less than a dozen of keys and it's not that difficult to manage.
I have the setting to only send that specific host’s identity configured or else I DoS myself with this many keys trying to sign into a computer sitting next to me on my desk through ssh.
Like I can’t imagine complaining about adding 5 lines to a config file whenever you set up a new service to ssh onto. And you can effectively copy and paste 90% of those 5 short lines, just needing to edit the hostname and key file locations.