At 10:40 AM 9/25/95 -0700, sameer <sameer@c2.org> wrote:
The really big sticking point I see, however, is the certification authorities. There is a single point of failure here and that is at Verisign. This becomes a large problem I think if the en rypted email that Netscape does requires personal x509 certificates (I read that Versign is issuing those for $9/each.) This is a problem because for one thing I don't think Versign will want to issue certs to psudonyms, and Netscape may not talk encrypted email to non-certified people. (I am not sure)
Verisign has a range of certificate types; a "Type I", which only promises that the userid is unique and is otherwise unverified, is free for non-commercial users and something like $6 for commercial; Types II and III require various levels of documentation and $$ to get. The www.verisign.com home page didn't exactly say how to get one; I gather the answer is "wait for October" or "Use the next Netscape version", where I'm don't remember if that's 1.2.2 or 2.0. Netscape is being modified to accept non-Verisign CAs, which means we _can_ build a web of trust to take advantage of it, using X.509 certs or a hybrid of X.509 and PGP. #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---