[[!meta title="OpenPGP keys"]]

Tails developers maintain several OpenPGP key pairs.

This key only has the capability to sign and certify: it has no encryption subkey.

Its only purpose is:

The secret key material will never be stored on an online server or on systems managed by anyone other than Tails core developers.

Primary key

Signing subkeys

Stored on OpenPGP smartcards owned by those who need them. Smartcards ensure that the cryptographic operations are done on the smartcard itself and that the secret cryptographic material is not directly available to the operating system using it.

If you already have Tails signing key but download it again, it can update the list of existing signatures of the key.

Encryption

The secret key material and its passphrase are stored on the server that runs our encrypted mailing list software and on systems managed by core Tails developers.

There are multiple ways to get this OpenPGP public key: