Using secure messages from Mail on a Mac

[Patricia1]

Please fill out the fields below so we can help you better. Note: you must provide your domain name to get help. Domain names for issued certificates are all made public in Certificate Transparency logs (e.g. crt.sh | example.com), so withholding your domain name here does not increase secrecy, but only makes it harder for us to provide help.

My domain is: which domain name for Mac Mail? Must I have a domain to create a certificate?

I ran this command:

It produced this output:

My web server is (include version):

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):

My hosting provider, if applicable, is:

I can login to a root shell on my machine (yes or no, or I don't know):

I'm using a control panel to manage my site (no, or provide the name and version of the control panel):

The version of my client is (e.g. output of certbot --version or certbot-auto --version if you're using Certbot):

[Bruce5051]

Hello @Patricia1, welcome to the Let's Encrypt community.

@Patricia1

which domain name for Mac Mail?

That is up to you.

@Patricia1

Must I have a domain to create a certificate?

For a Domain Validated certificate YES, however there are other type of certificates for different uses.
Technically you do not create the Certificate, you request the certificate and the Certificate Authority validates that the Certificate can be issued and then issues the Certificate. In Let's Encrypt case they are Domain Validation (DV) certificates so that is what must be validated.

You have not supplied much information, so regarding "Using secure messages from Mail on a Mac"
So what type of secure messing are you using for Mail on a Mac?

Let’s Encrypt offers Domain Validation (DV) certificates.

Domain names for issued certificates are all made public in Certificate Transparency logs (e.g. crt.sh | example.com), so withholding your domain name here does not increase secrecy, but only makes it harder for us to provide help.

Thus you need to own and have control over the Domain Name (or have a subdomain under an existing domain name, for example pointed to your server by your employer or school) you wish to obtain a certificate for, from an ICANN Accredited Registrar.

For Let’s Encrypt to issue a Domain Validation (DV) certificate Domain Validation must happen
and it is a CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirement.

Best Practice - Keep Port 80 Open

What IP addresses does Let’s Encrypt use to validate my web server?
Let’s Encrypt does not publish a list of IP addresses we use to validate,
and these IP addresses may change at any time.

Let's Encrypt uses Multi-Perspective Validation Improves Domain Validation Security - Let's Encrypt

Since these are Domain Validation (DV) certificates the Domain Name System (DNS) is used extensively in the validation process as well a allowing us to assist here on Let's Encrypt community.
DNS Queries need to give consistent results from any location on the Internet, all your authoritative DNS Servers for the Domain need to also give consistent results as well.

Testing and debugging are best done using the Staging Environment as the Rate Limits are much higher. Rate Limits are per week (rolling).

And to assist with debugging there is a great place to start is Let's Debug.

[Patricia1]

I was making things much, much too complicated in trying to send secure messages from my Apple desktop. I had to get a document from one company to another but I realized one of them could send me it via secure message after I created an account and then I could send it to the other one via their secure message service.