We need fewer of them, not more, and any CA that can give certificates away for free is guaranteed to have atrocious practices. i have used startcom for a free

We need fewer of them, not more, and any CA that can give certificates away for free is guaranteed to have atrocious practices. i have used startcom for a free ssl certificate for my personal site for many years and their verification process is more involved than godaddy's, which i also use for a wildcard ssl certificate and have to pay $199/year for. startcom requires client-side ssl certificates to login to their site, and then does verification with email and, if i remember correctly, a dns record or file placed somewhere on the current domain's site. just because they're free doesn't mean they won't take the time to do verification, and conversely, just because another company extorts lots of money from its customers every year doesn't mean they do any better validation.