OpenPGP

Raised as a usability problem by 9 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2013–2024), in 10 threads.

People raised many different problems with OpenPGP, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 12 complaints

Can't figure out how OpenPGP notation packets work or what they're for2024-05-07
Keys get lost or deleted, and syncing one key to every device is hard to do reliably2024-05-07
OpenPGP is hopelessly complicated and hard for people to use2024-05-07
Security professionals can't figure out how to use PGP2023-12-07
OpenPGP user experience is bad even for technical users2023-09-19
Key rotation is not exposed in the UX of most clients, so users can't do it2020-12-01
Simple everyday tasks are hard to do with existing OpenPGP tools2020-09-13
Cryptographic software is arcane and nearly impossible for ordinary users to use correctly2018-09-07
PGP setup often fails with unhelpful errors because clients shell out to GPG2018-05-14
Non-technical users need hours of explanation to set up encryption2016-11-22
Moving secret keys and remembering passphrases across devices is a hassle, so people avoid it2014-06-03
Sending encrypted mail requires obscure shortcuts and key steps that users can't understand2013-06-14