associate keys with accounts

[tomholub]

This issue is needed so that we can continue working on:
#220 choosing our own pubkey (sender) during compose/reply
#252 change pass phrase

We need a way to figure out which key belongs to which account.
This is important to know which key to use as our own key.

I'll add more info soon.

[arpitjindal97]

According to me, current logic is fine. Let's take your example:

1. I may have 2 different accounts: me@company.com and me@hello.eu
2. The me@company.com may have several alias emails: me@company.com, contact@company.com, purchases@company.com
3. I may have many private keys that serve various purposes for these accounts
4. Which of my own public keys to encrypt for when sending out a message?

You can add alias of different domains or same domain in a single PGP key. When you login onto company.com there you login differently for each of your 3 emails. (seems fair till now)

Now suppose, In App you have logged in using me@company.com. Assume that we have functionality to choose our sender email. You chose contact@company.com as your sender email. Your mail is ready to be sent with specified email but it won't send because the mail server of company.com doesn't authorise me@company.com to send mails on behalf of contact@company.com

[arpitjindal97]

To send mail as contact@company.com you need to add this account to app and compose through that

[tomholub]

In general, yes, it would be cleanest to simply follow key user ids.

We may do that, but it will require us to create an interface to update uids. Also, currently, when we create keys, we will only use main account email for the uid, so that would need to be updated too.

[tomholub]

This would still require us to cache key user ids in db, you don't want to parse all keys on each search.

[tomholub]

More pain points:

• not all users want all aliases to be included in uids automatically. We may need to show a screen on setup that lets them choose this
• if no key has user id that matches the email I'm currently sending the message from, we should let the user choose which key they want to use (if more than one key available). This procedure would update the key with the new keyid.
• However, https://attester.flowcrypt.com/ does not yet have functionality to update public keys with new versions that have uid changes. I'll need to implement that too.

[tomholub]

I should add, our philosophy is to don't ask user questions and set reasonable defaults without user interaction. This is different from other OpenPGP software which assumes the user has a fair amount of knowledge about how encryption and OpenPGP works. So in this spirit, when key is created during setup, we will do one of:

• add keyids based on all aliases
• add only one keyid based on main account address
• add keyids based on email addresses that were used recently, eg email was sent from them in the last 6 months

[tomholub]

@DenBond7 action steps:

Keeping track of private key emails

• - create a table that has longid, userIdEmail. This table will be populated with information about private keys.
• - (longid, userIdEmail) combination should have a UNIQUE KEY in sql, so that there can be multiple rows with same longid, multiple rows with same userIdEmail but not multiple rows where both (longid, userIdEmail) are the same.
• - fill the table with current info about private keys on app update
• - update the table when new key is imported
• - remove from the table by longid if a private key is removed

Searching when sending a message

If I'm sending from main account address:

1. search in the table by main account address. If found longid, use that key (public version).
2. if not found, show error No key available for your email address main@email.com.\n\nPlease write human@flowcrypt.com for help.

If I'm sending from alias address:

1. search by the alias email. If a key found, use that key.
2. If no key found, search by account email address. If a key was found, use that key.
3. If no key found in step 1) and 2) then show an error: No key available for your email addresses alias@email.com and main@email.com.\n\nPlease write human@flowcrypt.com for help.

[DenBond7]

@tomholub I need some clarifications

fill the table with current info about private keys on app update

1. I know how to get longid. But how do I get userIdEmail?
   And as I understand here , we don't have a method which returns information about all uids. (only PgpContact getPrimaryUserId())

search in the table by main account address. If found longid, use that key (public version).

2. Do you mean I need to use the current logic? If an active account is user@example.com I'm searching such user in the keys table and use a found key. Or do I need to search a row in the new table (longid, userIdEmail) and if I found longid then I search a private key in the keystable by longid and use the found key?

[tomholub]

1. I can give you a method to get all user ids.

2. Where is the current keys table defined? I'll take a look at the structure and let you know.

[DenBond7]

Where is the current keys table defined? I'll take a look at the structure and let you know.

#17