This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Mike Shoemaker. Original Post: Thawte Web of Trust (WOT) Feed Title: Unruly Rambling (java category) Feed URL: http://www.shoesobjects.com/blog/feed.xml?flavor=rss20&category=java Feed Description: My thoughts on software, technology, and life in general Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Mike Shoemaker Latest Posts From Unruly Rambling (java category)

For those of you that have not jumped on the S/MIME bandwagon yet or don't know what S/MIME is all about, now is the time for your edification.

So what is S/MIME? Well S/MIME stands for "Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions". S/MIME allows you to add Public Key signatures(digital signing) and/or data encryption to the contents of e-mail messages. Note: Encryption is only possible if you have the public key for the recipient of the email. In a nutshell, S/MIME allows you to prove you are who you say you are and to prove that your email has not been tampered with along the way to it's recipient. It might be the email equivalent to the United States Postal Service's Certified Mail. I just made that up and I'm not an expert using certified mail so I may be way off, who knows :) If you are wondering why this is significant, think of all the SPAMM that comes to your inbox today. If S/MIME became the standard it would be much easier to track down SPAMM'ers and hold them accountable for unsolicited email traffic. This is a big deal to me as I get thousands of SPAMM messages a month.

In order to participate, you will need a key pair and certificate for yourself. Fortunately, you can get this free of charge from Thawte. Thawte will provide you a free certificate containing your email address only, after all this is the only identifying criteria that they can verify to be true. To add additional information to your cert, like your name, you will need to be verified in person by a Thawte Notary. This is the web of trust part since Thawte is trusting 3rd parties to do verification. A Notary is someone that participates in the Web of trust and has been verified and assigned 100 points.

Here is how this works. The notary will ask you to bring several pieces of identification(one government issued picture id required) along with photocopies of each that s/he will keep. You will sign a document stating that you are who you say your are and that your identification isn't fake. At the discretion of the notary, he will assign you between 10-35 points depending on your documentation. Once you have 50 points, Thawte will allow you to put your name in your digital cert.

Notaries can be found on the Thawte website where they are listed by location(.i.e St. Louis city, St. Louis county). Most will offer verification for free. All you have to do is email them and set up a place to meet. Prior to last week, the St. Louis area had only a few notaries. That number has since doubled due to an effort by Hans Gerwitz, where he got 3 seasoned notaries together for an assertion party last week. 5 of us went from 0 - 105 points overnight and effectively doubled the number of notaries in St. Louis. Now I just need to find some interested individuals so I can practice my assertion power!