I’ve been using Thawte’s free personal email digital certificates for some years now. Unfortunately, Thawte discontinues the Personal E-mail Certificate and Web of Trust services. All issued certificates will be revoked on November 16th 2009 and the particular services will no longer be available after that date.

A digital certificate[1]’s purpose of existence is to sign or encrypt other material, either the latter is an online transaction, an email message or software code. Root Certificates, their respective private key actually[1], are used by Certificate Authorities to sign and add certain extensions to other certificates they issue, thus making the latter valid for [...]

This article describes how to become your own Certificate Authority (CA) and issue your own server certificates. Be advised that noone else, apart from you, your internal network’s people or your friends, will or should trust this kind of certificates (self-signed). These are intended only for providing secure communication with your own services or for testing purposes.