A Brief Introduction:

The purpose of this information is to clearly explain what smime.p7m is. This information is deliberately short, simple, and is not full of technical jargon. Feel free to link to this page from your email signatures, as I do, so that the people who you send messages to can understand what the file smime.p7m is.

You may occasionally receive an email with the file smime.p7m attached, but you don’t know what it is. The good news is that this is not a bad file.

What is smime.p7m?

The file smime.p7m is a special kind of attachment that your email program will automatically take care of for you. If you are using Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Thunderbird or any other popular email program, then you do not need to do anything with this file.

These files typically do not work if you are reading your email message in Hotmail, GMail, or Yahoo’s email service from your web browser. Don’t worry! Nothing bad will happen, but all of the cool things that I’m going to talk about on this page will not be possible to do if you are reading the email from the web browser.

What is the purpose of smime.p7m?

There are two very good things that smime.p7m allows you to do.

1. You can verify that the message comes from the person who’s name is in the “FROM” field of your email
    
2. They can send you private messages over email! but you’ll need a certificate too, and that’s a little tricky… (see bottom of this page)

What Does This Mean

#1 above means that someone can not successfully pretend to be the owner of the email address. So, a spammer or other sneaky person can not pretend to be your friend because you can easily determine the truth.

#2 above, sending private messages over email, is the real magic of the smime.p7m file!

How Do I Use it?

Good question! Thankfully, it’s really easy!

You see the example message above? Do you see that red ribbon? That is what you will see if you are using Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express or Windows Mail. If the ribbon is red, like above, then that’s good news!

Click on the red ribbon and then you will see a message box very similar to this:

You see how the Name, the E-Mail address, and even the Subject matches the information in the example above? You also see the text, “The digital signature of this message is Valid and Trusted”. Everything is good! The message is verified!

Now you can be certain that the email has honestly come from the person that you know. In this case, I have verified that the email message came from “Stephen Meyer”.

Private Messages You Say….? (the longest part of this page)

These smime.p7m files are things that are called “digital certificates”, and yes, they allow you to send private messages to people through email!

Here’s the real scary truth: Every email that you send is in plain text. Anyone can read it, not ONLY the person who you send your email to. Have you ever sent a post card? An email message is identical to a post card, because the text is clearly visible to anyone who looks at it!

Is that kind of scary?

Well, the truth is that the majority of your communication on the Internet is identical to a post card. Your email, your instant messages, and most of the websites that you browse are all transmitted to you (and FROM you) on the Internet’s version of a postcard.

That is why shopping websites and the website of your bank uses special security that most websites do not use. It’s that important padlock that you should always look for when you’re shopping or banking online.

These “security certificates” can be used by people like you and me, too. Most people do not use them because they think that their email is always private or personal, but that’s just a misconception.

The bad news that they are a little inconvenient to use, so even if people understand all of this about their privacy they may still not use one of these security certificates.

The good news is that you can get one for free. So if you’re up to the challenge, then you can secure your email too!

Click Here To Get A Free Certificate. There’s nothing tricky about that website, but remember, it’s a little technical to install it so it may take some time… but if you really want to use it, it’s free!

You can also purchase one, if you feel safer when buying a product. If you buy one then you will most likely have easier access to technical support. They are affordable. Get one from VeriSign (click here) for $20. VeriSign’s technical support can make it a lot easier to install and use your digital certificate.

There you have it! That’s all of the information about the smime.p7m file. I hope that this page was useful to you, and thank you for taking the time to read it.

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