In the vernacular of gpg, I understand public and secret keys. But exactly what is a subkey and what is it used for?

The Debian wiki has a good explanation:
https://wiki.debian.org/Subkeys

..which is also the first hit in Google for "what is a subkey in GPG".

What a kind and wonderful person you are. You did a google search for me even though I didn't ask you to. Geez how nice. In the future, however, kindly refrain from doing so unless I specifically ask you to. Just what was your point in telling me, and all, that you did so? Makes you feel important, I think.

With an attitude like that you may find others will also refrain from wasting time and effort responding to your questions.

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You, again, ask a question for which the answer is easily found. Then you get upset when someone answers it.

If you're too lazy to look it up yourself, and don't want others to spoon-feed you the answer, then why bother posting?

Nevermind that ... it's a whole lot like the subordinate credit-cards that you can issue to your kids (but, probably shouldn't).

Encryption-wise, all keys are pretty much the same: like a "self-signed" SSL certificate, they will protect your data just as well (or, not ...) as any other. But these keys, themselves, are also signed ... by the master to which they "belong."

Functionally: they let you create something to use for encryption and so-forth that you can safely revoke and get-rid of from time to time, without putting the master ("hello, world, I am me ...") certificate at so much risk.

The "sub-" refers to "subordinate."

I just tuned in to this. And it happens that I'M interested in your collective answers. I'll head for the URL you mentioned (right away). But if anyone has a 10-20 word answer for idiots, I'm watching. (to say nothing of the fact that several of you guys have 18 green blocks each. Anything you say, I wanna hear.

EDIT ADDITION: hey, that's a really nice page. Thanks!

ADDITIONAL ADDITION: Cool. different functions. One for signing. One for publishing (very handy). One for encryption. etc. Thanks again!

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