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.