Thawte - Web of Trust

Web of Trust

The Thawte Web of trust was discontinued on 16 November 2009. Thawte used to issue free email certificates and the Thawte Web of trust was the optional identity verification mechanism for it. To obtain a free Thawte email certificate, a person needed to sign up for a Thawte FreeMail account which allowed a person to create as many certificates as they want. Although each certificate was associated with exactly one email address, multiple email addresses could have been associated with a single Thawte FreeMail account. So if a person has more than one email address, they could have created a different certificate for each of them through the same account.

Associating the Thawte FreeMail account with the real identity of the person owning was based on a Web of trust model (similar to CAcert.org). The person's identity was assured by meeting face-to-face with one or more Thawte Notaries who needed to see identification and keep a copy of it (for at least five years). Points were assigned by the notaries. The number of points a notary could have assigned ranges from 10 to 35. In general, the more experienced a notary was the more points they could have assigned (see table below). Notaries who were directly verified by Thawte, through events Thawte attended or held, automatically could have issued 35 points without needing to gain experience.

The number of points determined what that person's account can do. With fewer than 50 points, the certificates issued had "Thawte Freemail Member" in the name field. With 50 or more points, the certificates had the person's name in it. The presence of the person's real name in the certificate can be useful for identifying the certificate (e.g. when stored in a key store) and to help the recipient to recognize and trust the certificate. For the purposes of signing and encrypting both types of certificates could be used in the same way, because both types of certificates had the person's email address in it.

With 100 or more points, a person became a Thawte Notary. When a person becomes a notary, they were initially listed underneath their country. They could then change that location and add text to advertise the services they offer. Changes to the advertising text were approved by Thawte and the notary was placed in a pending state while it waits approval. The approval process could take several weeks, during which the person's advertisement was not published and the system did not let them access it as a notary. Cross notarization was not allowed: a notary could not notarize a person who had notarized them.