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Getting Assured by a CAcert Assurer

Contents

Getting Assured by a CAcert Assurer

What is an Assurance good for?

According to our policies we may only include information in a certificate which is verified to a certain degree.

The primary intention of an Assurance is to verify your personal name, and make sure that the mail addresses of your account are really linked to your person. Once this is verified you have the option to include your name in certificates issued by CAcert.

A secondary intention of an Assurance is to show you how we do this thing. Since you may become a CAcert Assurer yourself once you have undergone at least three Assurances (depending on the experience levels of the people assuring you), you should have some experience with the Assurance process itself.

A further intention of an Assurance is to allow you to judge the "reliance level" of CAcert certificates yourself. No identity check is 100% error proof. We believe that CAcert's process is quite reliable, compareable to or even better than processes of many other CAs, commercial and otherwise. But in the end you have to judge this yourself, and knowing CAcert's Assurance process in real life is a good basis for this.

Where do I find an Assurer?

Log into your CAcert Account. In the Web Of Trust section you can search for an assurer by using the Find an Assurer option. An other option is the Assurer Directory, you'll find a long list of CAcert Assurers. Find one in your region and meet with him/her.

An alternative is to visit an event where CAcert will be present, look at Upcoming Events

What do I have to do prior to a meeting?

You need to

create your account at http://www.CAcert.org, make sure the name information you supply can be verified using your ID papers, see PracticeOnNames for more details.
'verify' your account by following the link in the ping-email (Beware of your spam-folder!)
download and print the CAP (CAcert Assurance Program) Form. (See the sections below on how and where to download this form.)

What do I have to bring to the meeting?

You need to bring

A copy of the CAcert Assurance Programme CAP Form.
- You can print one from your CAcert account page.
- For every assurance you need one CAP form. If you meet more than one Assurer, have more CAP forms with you.
You need to bring at least ONE official photo ID.
- If you have more than one, bring more with you.
- All IDs must be government issued like a passport, driving licence, birth certificate, etc.
- At least ONE of them has to be a photo ID, both if possible.
- Even though only one ID is required, with two IDs you can strengthen your case and increase the likelihood that the assurer will be able to give you as many points as possible.

Where do I get my personal CAP Form?

You can download the CAP Form ...

pre-filled with your details: https://www.cacert.org/wot.php - pick one of the WoT Forms in the navigation, after you have logged in.
pre-filled with what you need: FAQ/AssurancePrefilledForms - How to modify the CAP Form fields
empty: http://www.cacert.org/cap.php
in other languages: http://www.cacert.org/cap.php?lang=de_DE - just change de_DE to your countries language code.

If there is no CAP Form in your language you are more than welcome to help with the translation. See the TranslationTeam page for more details.

Not all my middle names are mentioned fully on my (driver licence) ID

It is quite common that middle names are not mentioned in full detail on your driver licence ID. Make sure this is noted on your CAP form. Make sure the full name on the account is similar as the name mentioned on your passport or official identity card. The name on the certificate issued to you will be the full name as mentioned into your CAcert account. CAcert has decided in a policy that all names once assured (shown on ID's) can be used as a name on certificates issued to you. However this new policy is waiting to be implemented into the system.

I want to get assured on a big event

Basically the assurance process is the same for private meetings and big events. But you have to understand that the assurers on big event are a lot busier and so it's even more important, that you read this page in advance. Especially the 'What do I have to do prior to a meeting?' section. Please make their job easier!

Find more information on

SuperAssurers - People who can issue up to 150 points $/!\$ is deprecated !

Note that the SuperAssurers programme is effectively Frozen

Alternate Subpolicy is under construction: Nucleus Program
AssuredAtBigEvent - Problems with Mass Assurances on Big Events
EventOrganisation - If you organise such an event

Why have my Assurance Points been rounded down?

You were issued 35 points however the system has rounded this
down to 0 and you now have 122 points in total.

Please read also The chapter in the Assurance Handbook2.

For historic reasons "Experience Points" and "Assurance Points" of an account only have a single counter, though we are working on changing this.

Until the change is implemented the maximum number of "Points" you can reach by being assured is 100, everything above 100 you'll get by assuring others.

If the Account being assured is already close to or above 100 "Points" some or all of the Assurance Points gained by an Assurance can be "rounded down" so the number of Points is not raised above 100 points by the Assurance. This is an implementation detail and will hopefully be history soon.

Also the "rounded down" points are not completely lost. They are still recorded in the database, but are not shown in the user interface. They might be recovered once the software is able to sum up two independent counters for Assurance and Experience Points.

Information for the Assurer

Alternatives to this Procedure

If you can't find a CAcert Assurer you can still get assured using a Trusted Third Party (TTP). See FAQ/AssuranceByTTP