THAWTE WEB OF TRUST - VICTORIA, BC, CANADA
Hold your mouse over underlined text for definitions of technical terms.
Secure your personal e-mail with a Thawte e-mail certificate to ensure the safety of all your outbound e-mail communication. Those communicating with you will be able to verify that mail coming from your e-mail address is verifiably from your e-mail address, and not a forgery.
Personal E-mail certificates can be used to: Sign your e-mail communications so that people know the mail came from your e-mail address. Encrypt your e-mail communications to prevent unauthorized people from reading them. Authenticate your identity to Web servers. Most modern Web browsers allow you to use a Personal E-mail certificate from Thawte to authenticate yourself to a Web server.
Purpose
Most email readers support the S/MIME standard for email authentication and privacy. To take advantage of these features it is necessary to get an X.509 certificate from a certificate authority. Most certificate authorities charge for certificates, and they guarantee that email, secure web pages, etc. signed with such a certificate originate from the owner of the certificate.
Thawte provides free X.509 certificates for securing and authenticating email through their Web of Trust (WOT) program.
A good site with more information about the Web of Trust and protecting your identity is http://www.minstrel.org.uk/thawte.html. A newsgroup dedicated to the Thawte Web of Trust is alt.computer.security.web-of-trust and a mailing list dedicated to the Thawte Web of Trust is thawtewot.
Participating in Victoria, BC, Canada
We would like the Web of Trust to be self sustaining in Victoria, BC, Canada. For this we need more notaries in Victoria. If you are familiar with the Web of Trust and are interested in participating in Victoria, BC, Canada by:
- becoming a Web of Trust notary,
- notarizing people in Victoria, BC, when you visit from out of town,
- getting your identity asserted, or
- any other way you see fit
then feel free to subscribe to the mailing list for promoting the web of trust in Victoria, BC, Canada. This advertisement-free email list is kindly hosted without charge by Peter SJF Bance. Once you subscribe, send a note to the list saying you are new and whether you are interested in gathering assertions. Someone on the list will inform you if there are upcoming assertion events, which could save you time.
Identity Assertions
To prepare for an assertion, make sure you have:
- The Assertion Form [Adobe Acrobat PDF] filled out with your information ahead of time
- Originals and photopies of identification pieces including:
- The identification you used for creating your Thawte account and/or
- At least one Government-issued picture identification, which may be the same identification as above.
At assertion events where you may be meeting several notaries, bring about 10 copies of the assertion forms and identifications. You may collect more assertions than you anticipate as other assertees become notaries at the assertion events.