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by hinata08 1283 days ago
No free service I know of will let you generate a certificate on the fly with your name on it, which will be considered trusted by most out of the box sw

You can get free digital certificates to sign PDFs with your email address, from basically any company. But that is hardly a way to verify your identity. Anyone can create any email address they want, and use any name in the address.

The eIDAS directory lists some companies that are pretty cheap. But you will still have to verify your identity, so you can't get a certificate as easily as with Let's Encrypt for websites.

Edit : Docusign and similar services have a free plan, but you can only sign a few documents before you or the submitter have to pay. So it's not free per se, it just has a trial. And they don't really check your id, most of the time. So anyone can create an account with your name too.
1 comments
hinata08 1283 days ago
I saw I was downvoted, with no reply to learn more about where I was wrong. (I don't get this site, where ppl know you're wrong but are unable to post a better idea. Is this about discussing topics to learn more, or shooting ppl down ?)

Did I miss something ? Can someone give me some clue ?

Digital signatures are an interesting topic.

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ElTimuro 1283 days ago
I also agree with you for what it's worth. Even it is somewhat possible, it should be WAY more open and free. Like SSL it's not a luxury competitve edge, but basic modern day infrastructure
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hinata08 1283 days ago
there are some initiatives for that, like CACert, a non-profit certificate authority. and ofc, there was GPG

But they're not convenient for businesses : either they buy certificates for their employees, or they have them signed by the IT department, that provisions their key into any piece of corporate equipment.

Few companies are into the community initiatives, especially when it comes to security.

Also, CACert is not widely recognized. The root certificate is only included in a handful of Linux distros (like Arch or Mandriva, but not Debian)

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ElTimuro 1283 days ago
Is CAcert still alive? I read the project kinda died
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