SMIME.p7s File – What Is It & How to Open It?

Have you ever received an email that contains smime.p7s file attachment? If yes, you might have many questions about what it means, if it is safe, and whether or not you should open it.

So if you see this file attachment in your email, do not panic. It is used to confirm the sender’s identity and facilitates the exchange of encrypted emails. It is nothing to worry about and is not something you can open.

Also Read: What is P7M File Extension? How to Open & Read It?

Document signing and email certificates happen to be fantastic products. However, it is not ubiquitous because many mail clients do not support mail clients.

What is the Smime p7s File?

S/MIME is an acronym for Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension and the Smime.p7s file format is the digital signature the sender includes with a digitally signed email.

So, when a person receives an email with this file attachment, the sender has an email signing certificate installed on their system. If your email client supports email to sign in, you will always see the verified name of the sender.

Secure/ Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions are one of the IETF standards that users use to sign mime data and for public key encryption.

It provides various cryptographic security functionalities such as data encryption, authentication, the privacy of email applications, message integrity, and non-repudiation of origin.

Having said that, before anyone can use it in their email application, they must obtain an email and document signing certificate from a publicly recognized CA.

Once the users buy and install an email signing certificate file on their system, they send the digitally signed emails with the digital signature that comes with smime.p7s file format.

If an email client like Outlook installs an email signing certificate and signs an outgoing message, the system automatically sends the smime.p7s file with the outgoing message.

For example, in Outlook, a user can find an email signed with a trusted certificate by clicking on the red ribbon. It will look something like this:

When you click on the red ribbon or any other icon indicating a verified sender, you can see the sender’s validated information about who issued the email signing certificate.

It will look something like this:

However, people start questioning it when signed messages arrive in other mail hosts, the SMIME.p7s file comes as an attachment. It looks like this:

We’ve shown the message in the Gmail browser interface here. It is regarded as an attachment because it does not support.p7s.

However, the server processes the signature and displays the red ribbon to indicate that the message is secure:

So now that we know what is a p7s file, let us address the next question which is whether or not you can open the file.

Can I Open an SMIME.p7s file?

However a p7s file can technically be opened in Microsoft Outlook, it is not a file that is intended or required to be opened by a user. It is present for the email client to use in order to authenticate the sender of the secured email message. Typically, there isn’t much benefit to opening the file.

Having said that, if you still insist on opening the file, here is how to do it:

How to Open an SMIME.p7s File?

One can usually find the p7s files in the email messages that include a S/MIME digital signature. They indicate that the message is secure and that only the intended recipient can read it.

The P7s file extension ensures that the email is from the person it claims to be from and that the content has not been altered during transit.

So if you want to open this file, below are the steps you can follow,

#Step-1: The first step would be to ensure you have the correct program needed to open a .p7s file. In most recent operating systems, installing a suitable program will automatically result in the correct file association with it. If the file is already present, open the folder which contains the P7S file.

#Step-2: To launch the .p7s file, double-click or tap (touchscreen) on the file itself. If the file does not open, try adjusting the settings of your operating system manually.

To open the P7s file, depending on your operating system, you can install any software mentioned above and let it work.

#Step-3: Select the software from the default application list, and click ‘Open‘.

Though it is unnecessary, if you want to open the file, you must follow the steps mentioned above. Email applications like Apple, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Microsoft Outlook support digital signatures.

However, if your email program does not support it, a P7s file is attached to a digitally signed email message. These emails usually integrate Public-Key Cryptography Standard #7 or PKCS #7 technology to digitally affix encrypted signatures to email messages.

Read Also: Where to Buy S/MIME Certificate?

Now, let us discuss who needs an email signing certificate.

Who Needs Email Signing Certificate?

Email and Document Signing Certificates, called CPACs (Comodo Personal Authentication Certificates), are used for emails and specific documents. Signing helps in several ways, such as:

• Verifying the identity of the mail’s sender to know that the message is authentic.
• It will notify you if the document or email has been tampered with and may even block access.
• It helps to encrypt an email message so that only the intended recipient can read it.

Suggestions

SMIME is the standard used for encrypting an email. Email clients support it recognize smime.p7s, and verify the contents of an email. But, often, one might find the same.p7s file as an attachment, mainly if you use other email hosts like Gmail.

If that is the case, you need not worry. It is OK to trust that email. It simply means that your email host doesn’t support a .p7s file like Outlook and comes as an attachment.