How to obtain a trusted certificate to use with digital signature?

[DavidSteinDesign]

How to obtain a trusted certificate to use with digital signature?

I'm trying to find a service that will allow purchase of a Document Signing certificate that will be Valid and Trusted by all recipients of that document.





In Adobe's help doc about this ( https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/certificate-based-signatures.html ) they suggest, under the Setting Up certificate-based signatures, to create your own self signed one OR "buy a digital ID (see the Adobe website for security partners)"...





The self signed certificate is not valid and shows up as "Signature Validity is Unknown".





Adobe lists their Approved Trust List Members and links to their sites here: Adobe Approved Trust List Members, Acrobat




It's a pretty awful website that only shows company logos with no way to filter based on location or language and doesn't even show where each company is located.





After clicking through more than half the links I found the majority were dead ends;  either companies no longer offer a product like I'm seeking (Symantec) or their site is in another language I couldn't read (sorry only bilingual here, not multilingual )  or only offering large scale enterprise solutions, or only offering solutions for PC users.





I'm hoping someone can offer assistance as to how to obtain a Valid digital signature certificate.





The best leads I found were: https://www.entrust.com/document-signing-certificates/  which was one of the AATL list members but their product only works on a PC and I'm running a Mac computer.





The other option: Trusted Digital Signatures   seems like it could work though it's expensive for the amount of signatures I would need. 





To clarify, I'm a single user /  business owner and only need 1 certificate.





I would like to avoid digitally signing a document and having the recipient of that document see that my digital signature's properties reads:  Signature Validity is Unknown.

Thanks in advance....

When I attempted to chat about this with Adobe, I was informed that the issue had to be escalated to a senior technical support person and I would be contacted 24-48 hours.

I would think this wouldn't be that difficult of a "thing" to provide information on. I can't have been the first Mac user to inquire about this? Hopefully I'm using the wrong syntax and not describing what I'm looking for properly or there is a quick-er solution somewhere.

[George_Johnson]

I use a Global Sign ID (your last link). I'm not aware of anything significantly less expensive, though it's been a while since I've checked. For what it provides (hardware-based token, secure timestamp server, user identity verification, etc.), the cost seems reasonable as a business expense. There is real work and expenses involved for a signing authority to set up and maintain the infrastructure that makes it all work.

Self-signed certificates can work if you can get those who wish to validate your digital signatures to add your certificate to their list of trusted certificates, though you won't have certain things like secure timestamps.

Another option that might work for you is Adobe Sign, which is included with Acrobat DC. You could sign your own documents and the resulting signed PDF is digitally signed by the service.

[DavidSteinDesign]

Thanks George,

I follow you on the cost. In terms of how frequently I'd use it, you're correct - it's not too steep.

I actually tried sending through Adobe Sign and cc'd myself and the signature validation status came through as "Signature Validity Unknown".

I'm not sure if you mean that the document itself is signed somewhere other than the signature box I had inserted in the .pdf prior to signing and sending?

Thanks again for your reply.

[George_Johnson]

Yes, I meant the entire document is digitally signed by Adobe.