Show your ID! KYC for the Zcash forum

I think that KYC* is important for preventing crime, scams, and identity theft:

Never trust unauthenticated claims of identity. Always demand and verify digital signatures.

* Know Your Cypherpunks:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

I claim this profile on the Zcash community forum:

https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/nullius

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iHUEARYKAB0WIQSNOMR84IlYpr/EF5vEJ5MVn575SQUCYtLaIgAKCRDEJ5MVn575
SSLBAQCHGhBZPPMQMEJBYzOfukY1FsrrN7hUz+bTpViwPz20VAD+ImyXXI4QNPl+
BG9XdnENu+Y3SHdqXhMn7u4qt0zD7gk=
=FgYP
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

PGP key 0xC2E91CD74A4C57A105F6C21B5A00591B2F307E0C:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5233083.msg54320576#post_nullius_pgp_key

Why I cite that page for my key.

Modern keyservers strip too much information, so I primarily maintain my key there. The same page has links to some archives and mailing list posts, showing some evidence that I have had the same PGP key fingerprint since, at the latest, December of 2017. It is not cryptographic evidence; you must exercise sound judgment about how difficult it would be to fake. More could be found by digging around. I created the key in March of 2017; but IIRC, the only place I could now cite as evidence earlier than November or December was a defunct Keybase account.

It is important to make sure that you have the right key. For an object lesson to newbies, I trivially created a fake key for Satoshi Nakamoto:

Verify the signed statement. Verify it yourself! Don’t claim to others that you verified it. Don’t rely on others’ claims to have verified it. And don’t do this (xkcd 1181):

pgp

How? There are plenty of PGP guides out there on the Web. For instance, I am credited in the Bitcoin Forum’s Indonesian-language guide to PGP, by a Bitcoiner whom I helped to learn PGP in early 2018. (He later translated my above-linked Anastasia essay and my Bitcoin Social Phenomenon essay to Indonesian; thanks, PGP!) For other guides, try your favourite non-Google search engine.

Well, now you know how I do KYC. Only one more KYC verification is needed…

My selfie:

nullius_official_seal


I had intended to make this post upon my return to this forum. Alas, my alleged robotic AI is returning ENOTIME errors behind an ever-deepening pipeline of posts that I need to finish writing. (Will do elsewhere later.) This is belated, but important.

Password authentication is weak. Data breaches are rampant, sometimes with nasty results. Even if my passwords are strong, this forum is a centralized service not under my control; it could have been compromised.

When a cypherpunk’s forum account awakens after years-long sleep, it is wise to check ID—the cypherpunk way. And I want to set a good example here: People need to learn to do crypto. If you don’t do PGP, you don’t do crypto.

Extra merits “likes” if someone could please explain the proofs that I designed in my Nullian Verification thread—and especially if someone here credibly demands such a proof from me now. “Credibly” in the sense of, “sincerely interested in verifying it—not wasting my time”. I sadly gave up on what I was doing with timestamps: Insofar as I could tell, nobody was verifying the proofs. (Pun intended.)

3 Likes

I like that you raise some relevant issues but harassment is against the CoC in whatever form it takes and the tenacity exhibited in some of your posts are more than borderline.

2 Likes