Since some years I am using for my private e-mail-adress a free Thawte e-mail certificate to sign and encrypt my e-mails. This works via S/MIME (X.509) and is very easy to use. Easier than PGP (which has other benefits).
Last year I had a problem to download the Thawte certificate. I created it and than you have a fetch button to download it. The user must use the same browser on the same computer under the same user he has create the certificate, to download it. I do so, but it does not work.
This year, my certificate expired recently, I try the same. I open the Thawte site, create my new certificate and want to download it, all via Firefox under Windows Vista, but I always get a download window. I select just “open” and every time the Windows Certificate Manager opens. Bastard!
I tried and tried and nothing really worked. It seems that only the public key was imported into Certificate Manager. I export into to import it into Mozilla Thunderbird, but this does not work.
After a short internet search I found the blog article “Thawte-Zertifikat im Firefox unter Windows Vista” by computergott. He wrotes the solution: The user has to start Mozilla Firefox in Compatibility Mode (Windows XP SP2) to import the certificate easily into Mozilla Firefox. Afterwards he can export it (secured by a password) and now it is ready e.g. for Thunderbird.
Here is what to do as a little picture gallery.
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- FF Preferences
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- FF compatibility mode
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- FF certificates
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- FF save certificate
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- TB certificate
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- TB mail accounts – security
First of all: Close all Firefox windows. Then you have to set the compatibility mode to “Windows XP SP2″ for the shortcut via you open Firefox. Then start FF, open the Thawte website, login, create your certificate and download it via the “fetch”-button. Then the certificate must be (without any extra acknowledgement) be imported into Firefox.
Now you can open the certificate manager under Firefox via the preferences and save (export) the certificate. The next step is to open Thunderbird and to import your certificate there. Then you only have to set the preferences for the e-mail account the certificate is for.
Hope this helps someone and prevent me from do the same mistake again next year, when the certificate expires.
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