Digital Certificates for Personal E-mail Security

A personal digital certificate is a form of electronic identification that lets you digitally sign your e-mail thereby validating that the e-mail is really from you and hasn't been faked. In addition a digital certificate allows other people to send you encrypted e-mail helping to ensure confidentiality of your electronic communications (for you to send encrypted e-mail to someone else they must have their own digital certificate).

When we send e-mail it travels from our computer across the Internet through various networks, mail-servers, and domains until it reaches it intended recipient. With each system that an e-mail passes through there is the potential (and often the likelihood) that it will be copied. This copying of e-mail isn't for any malicious purpose, but is part of the normal back-up and mail handling procedures of the systems it passes through. The problem however is that regardless of the purpose, your e-mail has been copied and is now available to system administrators, hackers that break into the system, other criminals, spies and snoops; and your e-mail may also be subject to improper disclosure through accident, error or theft. Even if no unwanted person is intentionally reading your e-mail, it still happens that e-mail may be misrouted and delivered to someone other than the intended recipient from time to time.

To protect the integrity and confidentiality of your e-mail you can install a digital certificate on your computer that will allow anyone sending e-mail to you to encrypt the message so that only you can read it. It also allows you to digitally sign your e-mail so that others know that it is really from you, and isn't a fake sent out by someone else as a joke or for malicious purposes. (For information on fake e-mail visit www.deadfake.com)

To use a digital certificate you will first have to request one from one of the Certificate Authorities (companies) that offer them. Digital certificates are available for just a few dollars per year, and for personal use are offered for free by some companies.

A few Certificate Authorities offering personal digital certificates are:

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