Uploading PGP keys to keyserver

Question

I recently got a new ID and decided to activate the eID function. Among other things it allows you to have your public key verified by a trusted source.

So, I tried to do that, but it told me that it could not find matching identities. I figured it's because my name contains special characters that I avoid in an international context.

So, I decided to update the identities tied to my public key and add one with the correct spelling of my name. I use Enigmail for Thunderbird. After adding I tried to upload it to a keyserver directly from there but it told me there was an internal error. I then went to https://keyserver.pgp.com to upload it myself. Since I couldn't find a way to delete the old entry I deleted it.

However, I was not able to upload the new one afterwards. I can still find the old entry (including an e-mail address that I no longer use for which I wanted to revoke the key as well) at http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/ and http://pgp.mit.edu/. I'm not sure what to do now.

Could someone walk me through the process of updating the identities tied to my public key and uploading it to a keyserver?

Answer 1

It is impossible to delete an identity (UID) from a key that's been uploaded to a keyserver. You can only revoke it and re-upload your public key. Your record will still have that UID listed, but at least it will be marked as revoked and won't show up for end-users when they view your key.

You may wonder how you can revoke a UID that you have deleted. To do that, download and re-import your own public key from the keyserver. You will see that your deleted UID is back -- and now you can revoke it.