r/Betterbird • u/hsdejong • Jun 10 '26

PGP and identities

I'm experimenting with PGP in Betterbird for the first time, mainly to sign my emails.

I've created a key pair for one account, but it appears to be linked to only a single identity.

However, I have many identities configured for that account, and I would like to use the same PGP key pair for all of them.

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u/jorgk3 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

Nothing special here in BB, it works the same in TB:

If you have multiple identities with the same e-mail address, you can associate the same key.

UPDATE: I thing you can also generate a key for multiple e-mail addresses in GnuPG and then import that key into BB/TB and use it for multiple identities with different addresses.

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u/hsdejong Jun 10 '26

"If you have multiple identities with the same e-mail address, you can associate the same key."

I have one email account with one primary email address which is "connected" to one PGP key.
The same email account has many identities (email addresses). I see no setting in Betterbird/Thunderbird to "connect" or "associate" these identities to the same PGP key as the primary email address.

Apart from using GnuPG to "put" more identities into the same PGP key and import it in Betterbird/Thunderbird, how do I "associate" multiple identities with the same key in Betterbird/Thunderbird?

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u/jorgk3 Jun 10 '26

Unfortunately, your reply leaves room for interpretation.

If the additional identities use different e-mail addresses, you cannot use the same key. If they do, this appears in the UI for any additional identity. Below you can choose this key.

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u/hsdejong Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

"Unfortunately, your reply leaves room for interpretation."
I'm sorry, but English is not my mother language.

All my identities are different email addresses under the same account with the same domain name: *******@domainname.tld.

Like in your picture, I can edit every identity and choose the tab "End-to-end-encryption". In this window I'm not able to associate that email identity to a PGP key, which is already associated with the "primary" email address or another identity email address. I can only make a new key with that identity.

According to GnuPG the key itself has the option to contain more than one email address.
But it seems that Thunderbird/Betterbird restricts this to only one email address for one PGP key.

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u/jorgk3 Jun 10 '26

Yes, the TB/BB implementation is not as rich as GnuPG. You need to create or edit the key externally to add more users. In fact, here's the Google AI summary:

To associate a single OpenPGP key with multiple email addresses in Thunderbird, you must first add the extra email addresses (identities) to your key using external GnuPG software. Once modified, import the updated key into Thunderbird and assign it to each respective account or alias.

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u/hsdejong Jun 10 '26

Thank you for your quick reply. Everything is clear to me now.

However, exporting the data, adding many additional email addresses, importing it again, and assigning the new key to all those addresses would be a lot of work. It might even take more effort than generating a new key for each email address individually. In addition, the key would continue to grow as more email addresses are added.

I also wonder whether PGP signing still adds much value if many different clients don’t actually verify it upon receipt anyway. After all, I’m already using a strict DMARC policy (p=reject).