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# How do attestations work?

An attestation is some statement you make about yourself. The intent is to allow you to describe yourself so that someone else, in trying to figure out whether to have a conversation with you, will not find you a total mystery.

Of course, since anyone can say anything about themselves, this might not be enough for someone who doesn't already know you. To help show them that your attestation is true, other people can sign your attestations. Presumably, they will only do this if they happen to already know you, either by talking to you through Yenta, or because they already know who you are in real life. A signature uses cryptography to ensure that others can prove what the attestation said when it was signed, and which other Yenta(s) signed it.

If someone signs an attestation of yours, your Yenta will record this fact, and will mention it to any other Yenta to which it gives your attestations. Other people can then check the attestation and decide whether they believe it, based on what it says and who has signed it. This works best if at least one of the people who signed your attestation is known to the person who is checking its signatures, but sometimes merely having several signatures is proof enough. It depends on what you're saying about yourself, and how much trust the other person needs about that statement.

Attestation signatures also include timestamps, which tell you when each signatures was made. This can help you judge the apparent age of an attestation, and hence whether the Yenta that owns that attestation has been around for a while or not.

You can define as many attestations as you like. Your Yenta will remember them all. You can also delete any of your own attestations at any time.

# How do you manipulate attestations?

The easiest way to start is to jump to the attestations page, which you can get to via the navigation bar above. Also, many links in Yenta that talk about someone else contain links that point to whatever attestations their Yenta has told to yours.

Tables which talk about attestions frequently have a column consisting of T ? X or U ? X. In such displays, the T or U indicates whether the given attestation is trusted. Yenta makes this determination based on whether or not the attestation is signed, and by whom. Of course, who has signed the attestation also matters, but this is only a matter that you can decide for yourself.

The ? provides a link to additional details about the given attestation. The X link gives you a way to delete an attestation; you can only do this for one of your own attestations. (Trying to delete someone else's attestations couldn't possibly work anyway, since it's their Yenta that stores their own attestations, and their Yenta which tells other Yentas about it---your Yenta couldn't affect that even if you wanted to.)

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