Dear fellows, I was trying to find out how to renew a certificate at Thwate and I found this on their FAQ.
Can I get a certificate for my Hotmail/Yahoo account? Web based email accounts are not S/MIME compatible. Therefore, they are unable to use digital certificates for signing or encrypting mail. You will not be able to use your Thawte certificate with these accounts. Why is that? PHP has a partial set of ssl functions. I normally use the openssl_pubkey_encrypt( ) so I believe if I would write a web based email interface I would look into the less familiar (to me) functions. There is also a package for ASP called, surprisingly enough, ASPEncrypt. I have used the later before but I do not recall if it has a decrypt object. I imagine it does. The only problem I see is the private key on the server. But even then, ssl and the passphrase from the user should make it somewhat secure. Is that safe enough? Anyway, just curious and still half asleep. Take care, Alvaro Zuniga
