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First of all I don`t use iMessage. I log out of iMessage on my iDevices.

Today I took a look of my login Keychain Access and there were 366 items. All of them were iMessage Encryption Key and iMessage Signing Key.

iMessage Keys

I delete it, reboot my Mac and open Keychain Access again. In the reboot 8 keys (see screenshot) were create. Is this behaviour normal?

2 Answers 2

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That's not abnormal. The system makes these and there's not much detail Keychain Assistant will show so it's a bit difficult to know which is used where.

Also, iMessages establishes a different key for each device you sign in to. The four key pairs you have could be one Mac, one iPad, one iPhone one and one watch.

I wouldn't worry about it - they are so small, deleting them seems more risky than the benefit of clearing out "old" ones.

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There is no problem in deleting those. Just close your messages app, remove all of those from keychain and reboot your mac. It will create a fresh pair for use.

PS: Log in and use it! It is one of the most secure IM services in the world, works seamlessly and allows you to send SMS from your mac.

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  • If you check the last aragraph of the question, the OP has already deleted these and they come back so they’re asking for an explanation why IMO.
    – bmike
    Feb 10, 2018 at 18:38
  • Bug. It's fixed in the latest version of macOS, but when using older versions, cleaning house every now and then seems to be the only 'solution'.
    – Bachsau
    Dec 11, 2018 at 0:17

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