Frederik Noë

What are X.509 Certificates?

A personal certificate is really a specially formatted digital "passport" that contains information about you and is signed by Thawte.

Thawte supports the X.509 certificate format. X.509 certificates are OSI standards-compliant certificates that will plug into a range of Internet software and allow you to authenticate yourself to any other party. You can use Thawte X.509 certificates with Netscape Navigator 3.0 or MSIE 3.01 and later to authenticate yourself during online web sessions. Netscape Communicator and Outlook Express 4.x and later versions also support the use of X.509 certificates to digitally sign email and news postings.

Enrollment procedures and instructions on how to get a Personal Email Certificate.

What is the Web of Trust?

The Web of Trust is a unique, community-driven certification system based on face-to-face ID validation on a peer-to-peer basis. It's a "bottom-up" CA, compared to traditional "top-down" CA systems.

You can get a personal certificate without being involved with the Web of Trust. To have your name validated on the certificate you must have your identity verified by Web of Trust Notaries. Each Web of Trust Notary can issue points (up to 35). Get 100 points and you can become a Web of Trust Notary yourself and verify the identity of others.

The rules

• Although the rules stipulate that only one form of photo identity needs to be presented for an assertion to take place, the more the merrier. Acceptable forms of photo identity are nationally recognized photo identities which are issued by the government or the state. These include passports, drivers licenses, identity cards etc.

• At least one of the form of identity presented needs to contain your identification number used in the in the Thawte Personal Certificate system.

• Your name in the Thawte database must correspond to the name as it is on your identity documents. It must include your first and last name, although you may leave out your middle name if you so wish. Thawte does not accept the use of an initial instead of your first name. No prefixes or suffixes will be accepted and no work details, telephone numbers or addresses can be added to your certificate, only your name.
more at thawte.com...

Get certified!

Frederik Noë: I'm living in Roeselare and together with Tim Dobbelaere we are the two sole Web of Trust Notaries in West-Flanders, Belgium. We can both issue up to 35 points when we perform a identity assertion. This means you'll be trusted and be able to include your name in your certficates after succesfull certification by us.

To get notarized, e-mail me to set up a meeting. We can meet in a bar or my workplace. Please include if you would like me to contact Tim Dobbelaere to also notarize you at that time.

• Region: Roeselare (home) or Brussel (work) both in Belgium.
  For other regions please view the Notary Map.
• E-Mail: frederik@noe.cx

E-Mail your Thawte User ID (login) - this may be your primary email address or your National ID number to me at least 24 hours BEFORE the meeting.

Do not forget to bring the following along:

• The original and a copy (1 copy per Notary) of all your identity documents. (passport, drivers license, identity card). We will verify the copies against the originals. We are required to hold copies of these documents for five years.

Congratulations!

And don't worry: we don't charge.

Frederik Noë