Obtaining a Personal Certificate

A quick journey to the Certificates snap-in or the Certificates dialog box reveals that you already have lots of certificates installed on your computer. (For details about these two tools, see Managing Your Certificates.) Microsoft Internet Explorer comes with a whole passel of certificates, mostly for trusted CAs. Internet Explorer uses these certificates when you begin to download a program that has been digitally signed. Whenever you download a signed program, therefore, you're using certificates, whether you know it or not. Also, when you connect to a secure Web site (indicated by a lock icon on the Internet Explorer status bar), you're using a certificate to create the encrypted link.

Note

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