Thawte is ending their Web of Trust product — it was a somewhat obscure product that would let users get free public keys to sign their email certificates with strong identity verification. Identity verification was done by an in-person peer-to-peer network, where you would go to a Web of Trust “notary” to get your identity authorized. If you had your identity notarized by three other notaries, you were now qualified to become a notary yourself.
It was a fun idea in its time, and it is being remembered fondly by the relatively few people that participated in it. I remember making trips across Silicon Valley to visit engineers at Netscape and other software companies to get my certificate signed. It was also one of the more democratic encryption ideas advanced by Thawte, which later sold to Verisign for billions of dollars, making its South African founder Mark Shuttleworth rich, leading to the founding of Ubuntu Linux and Mark’s trip as the first African in space.
As a reward for being an early Web of Trust member (and qualfiied to be a notary), they’ve offered me a free personal Class 1 Digital ID certificate (worth $19.95), and an EV SSL certificate valid for 2 years (worth $795!).
Thanks, Thawte! The $795 EV SSL certificate for Web of Trust notaries was a classy way to say “thanks” to your notaries after all these years. Glad you’re keeping it real even after getting acquired by Verisign, and thanks for doing your part to increase personal privacy on the web.
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Wow, that really is nice of them to give you that. Its through participating at these kind of innovative schemes that help to drive on internet protocal and increase security standards across the board,
Definitely, Oliver! I really like the way that the WOT has an expression of Thawte's goal to "make the Internet a better, more secure place" and not just "make money fast". It's unfortunate that email encryption for the masses remains elusive to this day!