title: The purpose of fingerprints (GPG)
body: <p>A question about fingerprints:</p>
  
  <p>Assume that me and my friend have a lot of time on our hands and that we have extremely good memory.</p>
  
  <p>I send him my public key. To prove that the key he has on his computer is the same key that I sent him, I proceed to call him on the phone and read out the whole key in ASCII, as he checks it against what he has on his computer. (I know that it is unnecessary to send the key at all if I'm going to read it over the phone but this is just for the sake of the example.)</p>
  
  <p>My question is then:</p>
  
  <p>Is reading the entire key out loud over the phone to the other person and having him checking it against what he has on his computer equivalent to comparing the fingerprints of the key(s)? I.e, is the fingerprint just a means to assure that the message has not been intercepted and altered?</p>