[Macpartners] Certificates for Random People Appearing in Keychain Access

[John Canfield]

Well, that certainly explains exactly where they're coming from, though their purpose still seems rather dubious. These people likely did send email at some point in time, but nothing that was very important or secure. I doubt all of them even realize their certificates are being saved like this. It must be only recently that this behavior started.

So, how does the sender turn the feature on and off? I'm guessing these signatures have nothing to do with the "Signatures" in Mail Preferences that insert pre-defined text when composing a message. I'm not seeing anything else in Mail (in either Preferences or any of the menus) that would appear to control it.

And can the automatic saving of these certificates be turned off on the receiving end? A few are not so bad, but if lots of people start sending them, I envision Keychain Access becoming cluttered with hundreds of certificates from people who'll never need to send me secure email.

I'm speculating the empty "Microsoft_Intermediate_Access" keychain was created when I installed Office. (It's always typical of MS to litter the system with junk, isn't it?)

Elmer - John
 
P.S.:  This is an amazing support group! In less than ten minutes there were several informative replies to my initial question.



On Feb 19, 2010, at 1:52 PM, Brian Bulmer wrote:
> These certificates are encrypted mail certificates form other people, mostly that are using apple mail, and sending signed mail.
> You will get a certificate from each one as they send you signed mail, and you have the choice to either trust the signature, or not trust. These emails will come in with a yellow bar across the top that says, "Unable to verify message signature".
> At any rate, when people send a message that is signed by their client, you will get these items stored in your keychain. You can alway delete them, or trust the sending person, and then all messages from that user will be "Trusted", example included.

On Feb 19, 2010, at 1:47 PM, Jonathan Reed wrote:
> The mostly likely cause of this is that someone sent you e-mail which they signed with their MIT certificate.  Apple Mail automatically adds such certificates to the Keychain, it's possible that other e-mail clients do that too.

On Feb 19, 2010, at 1:47 PM, Jessica A Smith wrote:
> You will see certificates for other individuals in the keychain if you’ve received e-mails on that computer from people who digitally sign their e-mails. It does not grant them any access to your computer, it simply remembers that those digital signatures are valid for future e-mails.