Disambiguation

Context

Describes the connection between the User and a contact. Represented by a ConnContext.

Fingerprint

A hash of the public key, used to identify users: if they have the same hash, they're using the same public key. This usually means they are the same user. Note that this does not work the other way round: a user who changed his client or the computer maybe didn't take it's private/public key with him, so he generates new ones, which results in new fingerprints, which means that the user is not authenticatable (except using a shared secret) without checking the fingerprint in an secure channel.

Human-readable fingerprint

See Raw fingerprint.

Raw fingerprint

A fingerprint in a non-ascii form. eg: "\x30\x67\x8b\xf0\xa6\xcd\xe7\x73\x2d\x8f\x78\x31\x68\x5c\xf5\xcc\x0f\x88\xa6\xc1". The matching human-readable fingerprint would be "30678BF0 A6CDE773 2D8F7831 685CF5CC 0F88A6C1"

Secure channel

A communication channel which is authenticated, ie. the two communcation partners MUST know that they talk to the persons they really talk to each other and nobody else is listening (the best way is a private face-to-face conversation, video chats are probably fine too, a phone call may also be enough for identifying).

Shared secret

A secret only known to two communication partners. They must be able to use it to authenticate one another.

User

A physical person using OTR. Represented by a OtrlUserState.