WebProNews

Following Twitter's recent problems, identity verification is at the forefront of everyone's mind, and Adobe launched a new program this morning that may play an interesting role in the field.  The Adobe Approved Trust List aims to make digital signatures more dependable.

As an Adobe representative explained in an email to WebProNews (and on its security blog), "The AATL will allow millions of users around the world to create digital signatures that are trusted whenever the signed document is opened in Acrobat or Reader 9.0 and above.  Essentially, both Acrobat and Reader have been programmed to reach out to an Adobe-hosted web page to periodically download a list of trusted root digital certificates."

Then, "Any digital signature created with a credential that can trace a relationship ('chain') back to a certificate on this list will be trusted by our products."  And users will see an image like the one visible below. 

Organizations including GlobalSign, the U.S. Federal Government, and VeriSign are cooperating with the Adobe Approved Trust List (with more partners on the way), so this is no minor effort.  Acrobat and Reader 9 turn on the feature by default, too, so it's about as user-friendly as possible.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Muncy covered the latest news concerning Twitter's issues earlier today.