In continuation of his efforts towards building a
responsible Cyber Society, Naavi has turned into a Thawte Notary under its Web
Of Trust Programme.
Thawte was one of the early Certifying Authorities in the
world. It was the first non US Certifying Authority and started operations in
1996. It was later taken over by Verisign in December 1999.
Thawte offers a unique Web of Trust system towards
certifying the Cyber Identity of a person. It is a
community-driven certification system based on
face-to-face ID validation on a peer-to-peer basis.
Thawte offers free Digital Certificates which can be used
for signing e-mails. Initially the Certificate will not carry your name.
However, through an identification process under the Web Of Trust programme,
you can get your ID incorporated in the Digital Certificate.
If you so desire, you can also turn into a Notary yourself
and certify the ID s of others under the given procedure.
To get your name into the certificate you need to find some
Web of Trust Notaries in your area using the Notary Map. Each of these
notaries will be able to give you a number of Trust Points when you appear
in person with your necessary identifying
documentation. The more experienced the notary, the more Trust Points she can
assign to you. Notaries can assign between 10 and 35 points. Once you have 50
Trust Points you become trusted, and you can put your name in your certs.
Click
here to find out more about The Web of Trust.
Why Should You Become a Thawte Member?
Presently, no Company has been offering Digital
Certificates to Indian Residents. Safescrypt which is the only CA who has
announced that it has been licensed, is yet to commence issue of personal
Digital ID certificates to individuals.
In the mean time, you can start experiencing the use of
Digital Signatures through Thawte. These Certificates may not as yet be
recognized in India since Thawte has not applied for and become a licensed CA
in India.
However, Verisign, which owns Thawte is the joint venture
partner for Safescrypt and there is no reason why there should not be cross
certification of Thawte Digital Certificates by Safescrypt. If there are more
Thawte Digital Certificate holders, then there will be a strong case for such
cross certification.
In the meantime, the members of Thawte certification system
can use encryption for their mails with others who have PKI based Digital IDs.
It will also enable you to test if your system can take on the burden of
encrypting and decrypting mails before you plunge into the Digital Signature
world more seriously.
naavi.org therefore urges public in India to become Thawte
members. As a first step, to obtain the Thawte free membership,
visit here. or contact Naavi.
Naavi
June 6, 2002
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