Purdue Mathematics IT

1. Log into the Thawte Personal Email Certificate website with your registered email address and password.
2. From the left-hand menu, click on “certificates” and then “view certificate status”.
3. Click on the certificate type (for example: “Navigator” or “MSIE”).You should be using the same browser with which you used to request the certificate.
4. The following page lists the details of this certificate. Upon looking them over, click the red “fetch” button at the bottom of the page.

The nex steps depend upon your browser and email client:

From Apple’s Safari, clicking the “fetch” button installs the certificate into your Keychain.

From Firefox/Netscape/SeaMonkey, clicking the “fetch” button appears to do nothing, but actually installs the certificate into your browser’s “Certificate Manager”.

1. From the Preferences screen (Edit > Preferences on Windows, Firefox or Mozilla > Preferences on the Mac), expand “Privacy & Security” in the left menu bar.
2. From the resulting menu, click on Certificates.
3. Click the “Manage Certificates” button.
4. Select the certificate (beneath the certificate issuer) and click the “Backup” button.
5. By saving the certificate as a file on your computer, you can later import your certificate into your desired email client.
6. Thawte provides some additional documentation in their KnowledgeBase.

In MS Internet Explorer, one can view installed certificates by:

1. Selecting Tools > Internet Options > Content > Certificates > Personal
2. From here you will be able to View, Import, Export and Remove your installed certificates.
3. You want to Export your Personal certificate to your desktop to later import it into your email client of choice.
4. Thawte provides some additional documentation in their KnowledgeBase.

Please note that downloading a thawte certificate currently is only advertized to work in the following common browsers: Firefox/Netscape/SeaMonkey, Internet Explorer, Opera. However, Apple’s Safari also seems to work.

Unless your have already been certified by “Thawte Notaries” (the Mathematics Systems staff are Thawte Notaries), your email certificate will say “Thawte Freemail Member” instead of your name. It will be simpler to go ahead and contact the notaries before downloading and installing your email certificate.

1. First log into the Thawte Personal Email Certificate website and click the “Login” button on your right.
2. Enter your email address and password that you provided to Thawte upon signing up .
3. You need to request a “X.509 Format Certificate” by clicking the red “request” button. This will open a new window which contains a list of browsers. Select the browser that you are using and, again, click request.
4. Click the “next” button on the “Certificate Bears Name” page.
5. Select the email address with which you would like to send encrypted email. You can later generate a different certificate for a different email address, if desired.
6. Click “next” on the “Strong Extranet Identities” page.
7. Click “accept” on the “Accept Defaut Extension” page.
8. Ensure that the pul-down menu lists “2048 (High Grade)” and click “next”. If the pull-down menu does not list 2048, you should upgrade your browser.
9. Your certificate is being generated. Please be patient. Depending upon your browse, you may be asked to create a new password to protect your certificate.
10. Review the information in your certificate, and if everything is correct, click the “finish” button.
11. Follow the “here” link to your Certificate Manager page.
12. Likely, the Status of your newly created certificate is “pending”. You will recieve an email once your certificate is issued.

Now that you have your shiny, new Thawte certificate downloaded onto your desktop. You can import it into your email client and get started signing and encrypting emails!

You must have the recipient’s certificate before you can encrypt an email message to them. Some mail clients will automatically associate the sender of a signed email with their certificate. Other email clients, most notably Outlook, require the user to do this manually.

• Mozilla Thunderbird
  • How to import a certificate
  • How to enable a certificate
• Apple Mail
  • If you downloaded your certificate with Safari, it already exists in your Keychain and therefore Mail already knows about it. When writing an email , click the small checkmark button to sign a message. If the recipient has previously sent you a signed email, you can encrypt the email by clicking the small lock button.
  • Additional documentation is here,
• Outlook with a certificate in Internet Explorer
  • How to configure Outlook to use your certificate
  • How to sign and encrypt emails and save other user’s certificate using Outlook
• Microsoft Entourage on Apple OS X
  • If you downloaded and exported your certificate to your desktop. You can simply:
  • 1. Open Entourage and go to tools > accounts > and select the active account
    2. Choose “select” in the “signing certificate” section and select the certificate just placed on the desktop
    3. You must then select “include my certificate when sending signed messages”
    4. This link: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/smime/ may provide additional information.

Obtaining a Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate is a multi-step process. First you’ll have to create a username via the following steps.

1. Visit the Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate website
2. Click on Join (right hand column)
3. Read the fine print and, if you agree, then click next
4. Fill in your name, birthdate, and nationality and click next. (Although, entering this much personal information into a web page is scary, Thawte is an internationally recognized company based around internet security.)
5. Enter your e-mail address and click next
6. Enter your language preferences, or just click next and they will be selected for you from your browser settings.
7. Select a good and memorable password and click next.
8. Fill out 5 “I forgot my password” security questions, print the page if you desire, then click next.
9. Confirm enrolment information then click next

An e-mail will be sent to you within 15 minutes that will have a link, and two pieces of information (Probe and Ping) you’ll need to cut and paste into the form that the link sends you to. Once you do that and click next you’ll have sucessfully created a username.

Once you’ve created a username you can either click next to continue, or come back to the Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate page at a later date and login.

The Department of Mathematics is using Thawte Personal E-mail Certificates for digital signatures. Signatures allow recipients to check that the e-mail they receive from your addresss actually came from you.

The basic certificate” signs” your e-mail with a genaric “free personal e-mail certificate” that is particular to you, but does not contain your name. Trusted members, those who have their identity certified enough to earn 50 points, get a signature with their name embedded.

There is another reason you may want to get a Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate. When passing back and forth confidential information, if both the recipient and the sender has a Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate then you can also encrypt your e-mail to secure its content.
To obtain the 50 points necessary to become certified, users can then find Thawte notaries who upon certifying the identity of the user can give that user points.