In terms of the Act, in any legal proceedings, an electronic
signature in an e-mail and the certification by any person of that
signature shall each be admissible in evidence in relation to any
question as to the authenticity of the communication or data or as
to the integrity of the communication or data.
The electronic signatures to which the legislation refers, more
commonly called digital signatures, apply a seal to an electronic
document that allows the recipient to be certain of the identity of
the sender and also that the document has not been tampered with
since it was signed. Additional benefits to the use of a digital
signature are that it is easily transportable, cannot be easily
repudiated, cannot be imitated by someone else, and can be
automatically time-stamped. A digital signature can be used with
any kind of message, whether it is encrypted or not, simply so that
the receiver can be sure of the sender's identity and that the
message arrived intact.
