All (and Benny),
Yes, I DO have multiple S/MIME certificates for the same address as
there are some valid reasons for that. As my signature says, I am a
CAcert Assurer. That organization issues Class 3 certificates where your
identity is very carefully validated through face-to-face inspection of
identity documents my multiple Assurers. Unfortunately, though, the
organization's root certificates are not yet automatically included in
any operating systems or browsers. Their certificates must be manually
installed and marked as trusted before certificates issued by the CA
will be recognized as trusted. Because of this, their use is currently
limited to more technical and other security-minded individuals.
StartSSL's root certificates ARE, however, included with all operating
systems and browsers, making them much more useful when communicating
with less technical individuals. Unfortunately, though, the organization
only indirectly vets a person's identity and only offers Class 2
certificates. While these certificate are just as useful for signing and
encrypting messages, the recipient of the message cannot have the same
confidence in your own identity as when using CAcert certificates.
I have also created my own CA and issue very limited certificates on it
using OpenSSL. I use these such certificates only when communicating
with certain very specific individuals.
Ideally, I would like to see MailMate have a combo box for both S/MIME
and OpenPGP whereby the sender could select any certificate desired.
While one might think that only a very few MaleMate users might have
need of it, yet I think that it would be both a useful feature to
advertise and that it fits in very well with the type of user that Benny
has been targeting since the first versions of MailMate.
--
Scott Blystone
Rochester, NY, US
CAcert Assurer (see http://www.cacert.org)
StartSSL Notary (see http://www.startssl.org)
Note: This address also works for instant messaging.
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