better to get one from a major (read trusted) source like Verisign or Thawte. you can get a personal digital signature (ID) for $20 a year.
you can make various kinds of digital certificates using Certificate Server, free from Microsoft on their 2003 Server Platform. you just need to install it, it’s not installed by default.
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Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 10:13 am
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February 1st, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Assuming you really do mean a digital signature and not a digitized signature.
The former is used to embed into the code of the document to verify its authenticity and the other is simply a picture of a handwriting signature.
A digital signature is used as part of an encryption program to encode the file. Different applications will have different requirements, but an x509 certificate is commonly used by many apps because it is commonly issued by both private and commercial Certificates of Authority.
If your application uses x509 certificates to encode, you can create your own certificate with a utility (Microsoft includes or makes such tools available with practically every OS, and is commonly available ot other OS as well), but if the certificate is “self-signed” (you created it yourself), you’ll likely have to send the certificate to be installed by anyone else who wishes to authenticate your file. BTW – This is exactly how S-MIME works (you exchange certificates which can be self-signed).