Managing Correspondents' Digital Certificates with Communicator

To send someone an encrypted message, you need a copy of their digital certificate. When you receive a signed message, Communicator automatically stores the sender's digital certificate. You can also retrieve someone's digital certificate from HKUST LDAP Server so that you can send them an encrypted message without first receiving a signed message from them.

Managing the Digital Certificates in your Correspondents List

When you receive or download someone's digital certificate, Communicator stores it in its certificate list. You can send encrypted e-mail to anyone in this list.

To view/ manage the list of people whose digital certificates you have:

  1. Open the Netscape Communicator Security Advisor by selecting Security Info from the Communicator menu.
  2. Click on the People link in the Certificates category.

  3. Select the person whose digital certificate you want to view/ verify/ delete.
  4. Click the corresponding button.
Please noted that once you delete the digital certificate from the People category, you will no longer be able to send encrypted e-mail to that person.

Finding Someone's Digital Certificate from HKUST LDAP Server

You need to setup a directory service to let Netscape Messenger query HKUST LDAP Server to get the other's digital certificate. Click here for the required steps to setup the Directory Service.

To find someone's digital certificate :

  1. Open the Netscape Communicator Security Advisor by selecting Security Info from the Communicator menu.
  2. Click on the People link in the Certificates category.
  3. On Other People's Certificates window, scroll down the window until the Search Directory button.
  4. Click Search Directory.

  5. Input the required email address and click Search.
  6. Click OK to save the certificates that were found.
  7. Click OK again to close the Security Info Window.