Error: There is no assurance this key belongs to the named user

[Jens Tröger]

Still haven’t found an explanation or solution, but after more searching I came across this thread on the gnupg-users mailing list.

    https://marc.info/?m=157167920418502

In contrast to that post, I do not have a duplicated .gnupg/trustdb.gpg*  And when I export the ownertrust values:

    gpg --export-ownertrust

then the list contains *only* 1E1...EA7 of the public key but not 09D...798 of the subkey.

Any help would be great!
Jens


> On Apr 16, 2026, at 18:50, Jens Tröger <jens.troeger at light-speed.de> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I’ve been happily using `pass` for many years, and have been keeping up-to-date using MacPorts: https://ports.macports.org/port/pass/
> 
> A few weeks ago, however, when I wanted to edit an existing entry, I received the following error:
> 
>    jens at pooh ~ > pass edit Some/Entry
>    gpg: WARNING: server 'gpg-agent' is older than us (2.5.17 < 2.5.18)
>    gpg: 81............98: There is no assurance this key belongs to the named user
>    gpg: /var/folders/2r/yyz1661s4j91vhdkzktg66z80000gn/T//pass.kF4Gb3qAp07WP/QHBHgP-Some-Entry: encryption failed: Unusable public key
>    GPG encryption failed. Would you like to try again? [y/N] n
> 
> In the past I could just ignore the first line WARNING and update at a later point; that had no impact on using the agent. But now, with this error, I’m able to `pass show` but both `pass generate` and `pass edit` stopped working.
> 
> When I list the keys associated with that “faulty” one:
> 
>    jens at pooh ~ > gpg -k 81............98
>    pub   rsa4096 2017-04-18 [SC]
>          1E1..................................EA7
>    uid           [ unknown] Jens Tröger <jens.troeger at light-speed.de>
>    sub   rsa4096 2017-04-18 [E]
>          09D..................................798
> 
> and when I manually use the subkey to encrypt something I get the same error:
> 
>    jens at pooh ~ > gpg --recipient 09D..................................798 --encrypt --armor
>    gpg: 81............98: There is no assurance this key belongs to the named user
> 
>    sub  rsa4096/81............98 2017-04-18 Jens Tröger <jens.troeger at light-speed.de>
>          1E1..................................EA7
>          09D..................................798
> 
>    It is NOT certain that the key belongs to the person named
>    in the user ID.  If you *really* know what you are doing,
>    you may answer the next question with yes.
> 
>    Use this key anyway? (y/N) y
>    Hello
>    ^D
> 
> So this works, although I get that exact same warning.
> 
> Now the question I have is: how can I fix this? And what happened here, why did that subkey suddenly (?) stop working?
> 
> Any insight would be appreciated, thank you!
> Jens
>