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Notarized Email  

Self-Destructing Email Notary and Timestamping service

The Self-Destructing Email notary service lets you Timestamp and certify your email and other documents.

Self-Destructing offers the worlds only Email Notary service which works for everyone without sender or recipient needing any additional software.

Our Notarized email enables you to indisputably prove the sending (and subsequent opening) time of your email. Your proof-of-sending and proof-of-opening certificates are court admissible legal documents which are independently verifiable, tamper/forgery resistant, and remain effective without the need for any "trusted third party".

Here are some common uses for Notarized (Certified) Email:-

  • Prove in a court of law that you sent an email when you did. You get an irrefutable receipt. Your recipient gets the email with an attached and verifiable digital proof of posting certificate.

  • Proof the email you sent has not been subsequently changed, forged, or tampered with. Your attached certificate verifies not only the date, time, and recipient, but also the email contents and headers as well. If anything gets changed, the certificate can be used to prove this.

  • Proof the email you sent was opened. Our digitally signed proof-of-opening receipts record when Email is rendered for display on a computer screen, including additional evidence to verify that the email was observed by a human recipient (as opposed to being read by a computer program alone), in an approximate physical location using recorded email or web-browser software at a specific point in time.

  • Other proof. Because Notarized Email is time-stamped and digitally signed (tamper and forgery resistant) you can use them for all kinds of other purposes.
    • You can email your thoughts to yourself if you want lasting evidence to prove you thought of an idea before someone else did.
    • You can email bets to your friends to establish beyond reproach that your authentic bet has not been backdated and was placed before the outcome was known.
    • You can hold competitions and use the earliest issued certificate to select a winner.
    • You can email your documents or assignments to yourself to prove later you had/created them at a specific time, and (if required) to guarantee they have not been altered since or prove that you have legal ownership.


Features of the Self-Destructing Email Notary Service

  • Worlds only long-lived verifiable secure timestamping service
  • Worlds only email notary service not reliant on trusted third parties
  • Tamperproof notarization of anything that can be put in an email
  • Instant integration with any legacy system
  • No software to download
  • No plugins to install
  • Already works with all sender and recipient email systems.
  • Protected by patented (US#6,006,328) components and open PKI
  • Distributed fault tolerant architecture provides security and reliability
  • Unmatched simplicity: simply address your email as normal, appending ".certified.self-destructing.com" to the end of all recipient email addresses


Comparison with the Surety Digital Notary® Service

Feature Online Notary Service
Self-Destructing Surety
Overview Our online Email Notary service with reliable tracking, certified, self-destructing, secure, authenticated, proven, junk-mail & virus resistant email enhancements Surety Digital Notary® program - software you can get (from sales@surety.com) to replace your existing email program with one capable of producing notarized records - at $1 each
Price First 25 free, 2 cents each thereafter (less in bulk) $1 each, plus possible software costs (5 or more cents discount for spending $10,000 or more)
Works with all Email Programs yes Yes. All senders and All recipients. No No. Separate programs required for both parties.
Long Lasting notary records yes Yes. Indefinite. Yes Yes. Decades.
Notary records published yes Yes. Worldwide via Usenet. No Not stated (not useful - Proprietary Private keys).
Notarize any documents No No. Email only. yes Yes. (if relevant software is available)
Open Source yes Yes. OpenPGP P.K.I. techniques. Trusted by millions worldwide. Permanent records are indelible. No No. Proprietary system. Relies solely upon trust of Surety and their continuing to maintain 100% uncompromised system security.
Verifiable yes Yes. Anyone worldwide can easily verify certificates for free. Maybe Only if Surety agree. Surety staff can vouch for their own certificate authenticity (only with full customer co-operation and document disclosure to Surety). Cost unknown.
Signature Validation yes Yes. Anyone worldwide can easily validate certificates for free. Free, open-source email plugins available for automatic validation. Yes Yes (by sender). Not by recipient (unless custom validation software is purchased/installed).
Easy to Use yes Yes. Just change the recipient email address. Yes Yes. Just change the sender and recipient email programs.
Easy to Verify yes Yes. Numerous tools and/or the Self-Destructing web site are available to assist. No No. Not verifiable by customer.
Easy to Validate signature yes Yes. Free, simple, and can even be automatic in all popular email programs. Yes Yes (by sender). Recipient validation only with custom software purchase/install.
Easy to use in Court yes Yes. Simple instructions to print out for the day. Any knowledgeable mathematician or cryptographer can verify evidence if required (instructions included). No No. Sworn testimony of Surety staff (if available) must be accepted by the court.
Trusted yes Trust is not necessary. Open published techniques avoid this necessity. ? Time will tell.
Worldwide yes Yes. Free or Inexpensive verification always available locally. ? Unstated. Potentially expensive (or unavailable) court appearances necessary.
Proof of posting yes Yes. Sender and Recipient yes Unstated. Sender only (if avail)
Proof of opening yes Yes. No No.
Multiple redundant distributed architecture yes Yes. 3 independent sites. 3 different continents. yes Yes. 2 sites. 1 continent.
High Bandwidth secure datacenters, fault tolerant hardware yes Yes. 3 sites. yes Yes. 2 sites.
Monitored security, daily backups, offsite storage. yes Yes, Yes, Yes. yes Yes, Yes, unstated.
Email Plugins available. yes Yes (optional) - all email clients supported. yes Yes (mandatory) - Lotus notes only.
Works with WebMail e.g. Hotmail Yahoo etc yes Yes. All. no No.
Information Source ! Self-Destructing web site, June 2002 ! Surety Web Site, June 2002
Site Self-Destructing.com www.Surety.com
Note Above comparisons are accurate based on the available public information at time of writing. Dennis Dourgarian (Surety Inc. CFO) and his Lawyers (Hogan & Hartson L.L.P.) dispute some of the information contained herin, but refuse (are unable) to provide any information or references to refute our comparison.


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email notary