Importance

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Abstract

A system for electronic distribution of postage includes at least one secure central computer for generating postal indicia in response to postage requests submitted by end user computers, and at least one postal authority computer system for processing the postal indicia on mail pieces. A key aspect of the system is that all secure processing required for generating postal indicia is performed at secure central computers, not at end user computers, thereby removing the need for specialized secure computational equipment at end user sites. A secure central computer includes a database of information concerning user accounts of users authorized to request postal indicia from the secure central computer. A request validation procedure authenticates received postage requests with respect to the user account information in the database. A postal indicia creation procedure, applies a secret encryption key to information in each authenticated postage request so as to generate a digital signature and combines the information in each authenticated postage request with the corresponding generated digital signature so as to generate a digital postage indicium in accordance with a predefined postage indicium data format. A communication procedure securely transmits the generated digital postage indicium to the requesting end user computer. Each end user computer typically includes a communication procedure for sending postage requests to a secure central computer at which a user account has been established, and for receiving a corresponding digital postage indicium. A postage indicium printing procedure prints a postage indicium in accordance with the received digital postage indicium.

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First Claim