This will display the key with the 16-byte digest of the public key components. You can both verify each other's keys this way, and then you can sign each other's keys with confidence. This is a safe and convenient way to get the key trust network started for your circle of friends. It's best to use a different channel than the one that was used to send the key itself. A good combination is to send the key via E-mail, and the key fingerprint via a voice telephone conversation.
Some people distribute their key fingerprint on their business cards, which looks really cool.
For current versions of PGP, the key fingerprint is computed using the MD5 hash function. A future version of PGP will optionally use a new and different hash function, SHA, instead of MD5. Since every PGP user has a copy of my public key, no one could tamper with all the copies that are out there. The discrepancy would soon be noticed by someone who checked it from more than one source, and word would soon get out on the Internet. The information printed above conceivably could still be tampered with in the electronic distribution of the PGP User's Guide.