Editing Key server (cryptographic) (section)

=== Lack of retraction mechanism ===

The OpenPGP keyservers since their development in 1990s suffered from a few problems. Once a public key has been uploaded, it was purposefully made difficult to remove it as servers auto-synchronize between each other (it was done in order to fight government censorship). Some users stop using their public keys for various reasons, such as when they forget their pass phrase, or if their private key is compromised or lost. In those cases, it was hard to delete a public key from the server, and even if it were deleted, someone else can upload a fresh copy of the same public key to the server. This leads to an accumulation of old fossil public keys that never go away, a form of "keyserver plaque".

The lack of a retraction mechanism also breached the European [[General Data Protection Regulation]], which was cited as a reason for the closure of the SKS pool.<ref name=sks-archive/> Modern PGP keyservers allow deletion of keys. Because only the owner of a key's e-mail address can upload a key (see next section) in such servers, the key stays deleted unless the owner decides otherwise.