How many of us have found ourselves having to send a digitally signed document, or even wanting to manage our relationship with public administrations, and have thought how useful it would be to be able to do it, for example, from our iPhone. The truth is that more and more we are witnessing a digitization of bureaucracy and numerous procedures are only possible through authentication with our digital certificate. For all this, it is essential for us to be up to date with digital procedures and having our digital user certificate installed on various devices can be very useful for us.
Today we are going to tell you how to install the digital certificate in the Safari browser, which you will see how it will make your iPhone an even more versatile tool that will allow you to digitally sign your documents or identify yourself on pages that require authentication. Of course, you can also use it on your Mac or iPad, browsing with Safari.
Get the Digital Certificate
As a brief start, remember that the certificate is requested online from a device, in which, we will not make any update, until we have finally downloaded it, so that there is no problem with the download. When requested, it is required that the person go in person to identify themselves at an office, here you can consult them. Or, now, it is also possible using the DNIe. All the information about the certificates can be found on the page of the issuer of the same, we leave you the link of the page of the Royal Mint and Stamp Factory, which issues widely recognized user certificates.
Once we have completed the process, they will send us the file, usually with .pfx extension, and we will have the digital certificate in the downloads of our device, and the password for its installation.
How to install the digital user certificate on the iPhone
First we have to locate our certificate in downloads, We touch on it and it will ask us to go to the profile to install it. We will go to Settings, and in our profile, and it will appear downloaded profile. We will touch, and that is when it will take us to the Install profile screen. Then the logical step: We give it to install, and it will ask us for the password. We enter the password and we will have the certificate installed and ready to use on our iPhone.
Install the digital user certificate on our Mac
To install the digital user certificate in our Mac we will use the Keychain Access app. We remind you that this macOS app stores passwords and account information so you don't have to remember and manage so many passwords. The application takes care of saving and recovering usernames, passwords and other information in a secure way.
To quickly locate Keychain Access you can search for the app in Spotlight and press enter. Then we select the option login keychain, in the Keychain Access sidebar. Now we will drag the certificate with the mouse to the right part of the window, and we will introduce the password of the certificate.
How to install the certificate on our iPad
To install the digital user certificate on our iPad, we will do it the same way we did for our iPhone.
Let's remember, we must have our digital certificate in downloads, we will locate it and touch to open it. It will send us to the Profile to install it. We will enter Settings, where it will appear Profile downloaded. We will touch the downloaded profile and the Install profile screen will open, dwhere we will give Install profile. It will ask us for the password and that's it!
How to use the digital certificate on our iPhone, Mac or iPad
And now yes. Once installed, as we have been seeing, on the iPhone, Mac or iPad, All that remains is for you to open the Safari browser and try to enter the Tax Agency page, you will see that you can now identify yourself with your digital certificate. Easy peasy!
Final Tips
To finish, we want to leave you a comment and some extra information about the utility of the digital certificate and its management.
First some notes Digital certificates are also known as public keys. They collect the identification data of a person before an official body and allows us to confirm our identity on the Internet. They have two parts, the digital signature, which validates the signature, and the signer's own identity; and also the electronic certificate, which is the document with which a user is identified on the Internet.
Can be of Physical person; Representative, generally of legal entities; there is also one for Public Administration, for personnel at the service of Public Administrations and with an electronic stamp for automated administrative action; and finally, there are the component certificates, designed for servers or computer applications.
As advice, we want to recommend that you make a copy of the certificate and also keep your password, in case you need to install it on some other device, you never know when we might need it.
Remember that, when installing it, It is advisable to check the options that it is exportable (mark this key as exportable), which will allow you to make a backup copy or export them at another time; that of including the extended properties, to have the complete certificate; and finally, the option to enable secure private key protection, so the browser will notify you when the certificate is used.
It would not be the first time that we change computers and we have to do the whole process again on the new Mac, for example. It does not mean anything if we use it on the iPhone, which is a device that is being renewed every year. The normal thing is that backup copies are made and that we can also easily transfer it from one terminal to another. But for now, it depends on us and it is not done automatically. so remember to choose the export option.
As you can see, it is extremely simple, as they say, and as we have said: a piece of cake. If you follow these steps, installing the digital user certificate on your devices is easy. You will gain in usability for all digital procedures and you will save time and effort if you can manage it from your Mac, iPhone or iPad.