Couldn't reply to your thread directly, so here:
It shouldn't be a problem when someone steels your key. At least not when it is protected with a strong password.
As I said, you can and should always use `ssh-agent` and protect all of your keys with a password.
Now that it was mentioned, I am really not sure, if `ssh-agent` also works for processes started by `cron`.
Couldn't reply to your thread directly, so here:
It shouldn't be a problem when someone steels your key. At least not when it is protected with a strong password.
As I said, you can and should always use `ssh-agent` and protect all of your keys with a password.
Now that it was mentioned, I am really not sure, if `ssh-agent` also works for processes started by `cron`.