[ncolug] Re: Thawte personal E-mail certificates
- From: Bryan Savage <theOnlyLinuxGuy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ncolug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:56:24 -0500
larry wrote:
> Bryan Savage wrote:
>
>> Thawte offeres free personal email certificates.
>
>
> I have been watching people do this for many years, but I can't come
> up with a reason to use it - can you give an example of a circumstance
> where you needed to prove you were who you said you were?
>
The purpose of signing is twofold 1) prove who you are and 2) ensure
that the content was delivered unaltered.
I don't routinely sign my email but I can see how this might be useful
in the business world.
More important to me is the ability to encrypt. This has very real
use. For example (the reason I started this thread), I set up a shell
account for Mike B and didn't want to email the password to him in plain
text. He created a PGP/GPG key pair and sent a signed email to me.
With his public key, I can now send him an email encrypted with his
public key that can only be decrypted with his private key.
The only reason I brought up Thawte specifically is because personal
certificates seem to be easier to use than GPG.
Bryan
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