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I am an army chaplain in the ministry of Defense in the Royal Dutch Army. By the end of the year 1999 it became clear to me that, because of my work, I would go on a mission abroad for half a year. I was scheduled to go with UNFICYP 5, a peacekeeping operation of the United Nations on Cyprus, from June till December 2000.

For me and my family it would become the first time, and that is why we decided to prepare ourselves very carefully. We knew this mission is not described as dangerous, so if nothing terrible would happen we could expect to see each other back alive and well, but still it would be a half year: a very long time to be involuntarily separated.

I decided to make use of all communication possibilities available as much as I could so an optimal contact could be arranged between me and my wife during the separation. I was thinking for that matter about phone contact and e-mail. I discovered the rates the telephone companies on Cyprus charged were terribly high, so the main communication method should be e-mail.

My wife didn't have an email address and she was more or less scared of computers. Still we decided email would be the best thing to use. So I took care she got her own address and with a mail program I arranged things in such a way that with a few buttons she could send and receive mail. So during the time of preparation we practiced a lot in the new world of electronic mail. She became confident enough and we trusted she could do it without my help during the mission.

A colleague chaplain told me about the possibility of encrypting mail. I was interested because I was not really convinced the communication connections on Cyprus were really safe enough to guarantee privacy. And that is what we needed for this half year: some electronic privacy. I knew about several ways I could encrypt my mail. I could zip my letters with a password, or use an encryption program. Now my colleague told me about Thawte and the possibilities it offered. He had a free certificate and he was very enthusiastic. So I decided to give it a try. I got my certificate and working with it I discovered it was very user friendly. Once installed I didn't notice much of it anymore. So I arranged a certificate for my wife too, installed it and with this we experimented a while. We had now a guarantee to have some privacy: only she and I were able to read each others mails. And the best thing was my wife didn't need more skills to use it.

Well when the time was there, and I really went to Cyprus we mailed without having to do anything special with encrypted e-mails. No one else was able to come between us. It was a small but very convenient support of a half year involuntarily separation.
Thanks Thawte!

Eric Stam