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Email Security Information
This page is supposed to contain useful information about email security methods called PGP and S/MIME.
Unfortunately, I foolishly deleted the contents of the page and need to recreate it. Sorry.
In short: If you receive an email with a file named "smime.p7s" attached to it, don't panic!
It's merely a type of digital signature that is used to verify the sender of the message is who they claim they are and that the contents of the message have not been modified in transmission. It is not human-readable, but will cause no harm if opened. It is generated by a method of email security called S/MIME (hence the name of the file).
If you are using a mail client like Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, etc. receiving a digitally signed email message should automatically import the sender's digital certificate into your system so you can verify the digital signature and, if you want, send them encrypted email (that is, sending them a message that has been encoded and can only be decoded by the recipient -- this ensures the privacy of the message).
If you are not using such a mail client, and are instead using a web-based email service like Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, etc., such providers are not able to handle these signatures or certificates, and so this information will appear as an attachment entitled "smime.p7s".
You can learn how to request, install, and use such a digital certificate for your own use using by clicking here.
Unfortunately, I foolishly deleted the contents of the page and need to recreate it. Sorry.
In short: If you receive an email with a file named "smime.p7s" attached to it, don't panic!
It's merely a type of digital signature that is used to verify the sender of the message is who they claim they are and that the contents of the message have not been modified in transmission. It is not human-readable, but will cause no harm if opened. It is generated by a method of email security called S/MIME (hence the name of the file).
If you are using a mail client like Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, etc. receiving a digitally signed email message should automatically import the sender's digital certificate into your system so you can verify the digital signature and, if you want, send them encrypted email (that is, sending them a message that has been encoded and can only be decoded by the recipient -- this ensures the privacy of the message).
If you are not using such a mail client, and are instead using a web-based email service like Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, etc., such providers are not able to handle these signatures or certificates, and so this information will appear as an attachment entitled "smime.p7s".
You can learn how to request, install, and use such a digital certificate for your own use using by clicking here.