Here in Spain, they have adopted a thing called a "digital certificate" which is stored on your computer and can be used to endorse correspondence, payments and even access medical records. For the locals, it can be added to their National Identity Card, but it is actually not a lot of use for an expat, which is why almost no-one I know has heard of it, let alone got one.
I only set ours up when the IT guy I was helping suggested I should get one. I did, for myself and G, but only ever used mine once to endorse a tax payment and occasionally to check the dates for my prescriptions (not available for normal password access to the website for some reason).
It was an absolute bitch to set up, not least because it had very specific, and antiquated, IT requirements. Everything had to be done on the same PC over a period of a couple of weeks - and the PC had to specific versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer; any / all anti-virus and security software inactivated; and a weird and wonderful piece of software downloaded from the government site which contravened every rule in the security handbook.
Having set up the antique system, there was a strange procedure requiring you to log onto the site and give them your data, whereupon they sent an email with a 6-digit code. You then had to take this into the Town Hall and get it authenticated by someone who also printed a paper licence. Next you had to log back in with this data and then download a bunch of software, which was then moved into a cetificate-area.
Oh, and all this on a site which was all in spanish and didn´t have any error messages if things went wrong. There was no place for Apple systems, but they did allow you to use Firefox browser, but that had to be version 88 which was about 4 years out of date even then.
It really was a total heap of crap, but, iit did become a challenge which I eventually overcame.
In the middleof last year, that is five years later, they told me I had to renew them both and implied that it was quite simple. Oh no it wasn´t. Somehow I managed to renew G´s, but mine just hung up. My spanish IT pal spent about 4 hours on it, but eventually decided it was somehow corrupted and I would have to start from scratch. I decided not to bother.
WIth the vaccination cerificates likely becoming a necessity here soon, and knowing that it would be on the medical website requiring digitally certified access, I thought maybe I would have another go especially as they now allow the use of Mac and Safari. Well, they say they do, but it would not work, even when I stuck a Firefox V88 browser up At one point I realised that the site had a warning that parts of it were inoperable during the morning (the parts I wanted too), but even after that period it would not work.
In desperation I dragged out a little Dell netbook I bought 10 or so years ago and onto which I had loaded the Ubuntu operating system when Microsoft stopped support anything that would run on it. Luckily Ubuntu uses Firefox, so ignoring the version issue, I gave it a whirl.
Bloody hell - it started to work.
I should mention that the Town Hall had provided a flow chart to undertake the procedure, but it had missed out some salient points. One (minor) issue was that the process would seemingly hang, but it was because for some reason there was no automatic scroll on the site and I had to guess when there might be more data or an answer and scroll down manually just-in-case. Hmmm.
Anyway, and after much swearing and many cups of tea, I eventually got an email with a 6-digit code and I have an appointment at the Town Hall in the middle of next week.
Don´t be fooled into thinking that I have cracked it - I remember that the next part is possibly worse.
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