VeriSign's Email Certificates Work!

Last week I posted - in frustration - about Thawte's decision to exit the Personal E-Mail Certificate business. They did so for pretty obvious reasons - why give away free certificates - as they had done for years - while bearing the costs of supporting them, etc.

As part of the transition, Thawte offered a 1 year free VeriSign Class 1 Individual certificate - and I had grumbled that the VeriSign issuance process didn't seem to work well on my Mac. I was wrong.

Looking at my Keychain, the new VeriSign certificates were issued correctly and installed in my Mac's Keychain. To use them, I needed to "untrust" my Thawte certificates and, once I did so, they started working fine for signing and encrypting in my Mac's Mail.app.

Bottom line: I'm sorry to see Thawte exit this business but I understand why they did so. I appreciate VeriSign's generosity in making a 1 year cert available. But I still think all of this secure email stuff is way to hard.

If only my friends at Voltage would step up to fully supporting the Mac, I'd be a very happy camper, I'm sure!