| digital signature
Forgery is a growing concern among
Netizens. After all, who's to say that a message with your name on it is
really from you and not somebody pretending to be you? Digital signatures
are a means of proving that a file or email message belongs to a specific
person, much as a driver's license proves identity in real life. Digital
signatures have the added benefit of verifying that your message has not
been tampered with. When you sign a message, a hash function--a
computation that leaves a specific code, or "digital fingerprint"--is
applied to it. If the fingerprint on the recipient's message doesn't match
the original fingerprint, the message has been altered. |