Patent ID: 7975290

Claim:
A method, comprising: creating a certificate registry including authentication certificates issued to each one of a plurality of information providers and a root certificate corresponding to all of said authentication certificates, wherein each one of said authentication certificates links respective authentication information thereof to identification information of a corresponding one of said information providers, wherein each one of said authentication certificates includes a respective Instant Messaging (IM) screen name information of the information provider, and wherein said authentication certificates of the certificate registry are associated in a manner at least partially dependent upon at least one of a particular type of information that said information providers provide, a particular organization that said information providers are associated with, a particular type profession in which said information providers are engaged and a particular geographical region in which said information providers are located; providing the root certificate to an information recipient; and facilitating verification of an authentication certificate received by the information recipient from a specified IM screen name, wherein verifying said received authentication certificate includes successfully verifying authenticity of said received authentication certificate using authentication information contained in the root certificate thereby verifying that said received authentication certificate belongs to the certificate registry; and facilitating verification of an IM message sent using the specified IM screen name and received by the information recipient after successful verification of authenticity of said received authentication certificate, wherein verifying said IM message includes successfully verifying authenticity of the IM message using authentication information contained in said received authentication certificate, wherein the IM message includes an encoded checksum for designated parts of the IM message, and wherein facilitating verification of the IM message includes verifying authenticity of the encoded checksum.