Ié root ?

Hello folks;)
This has probably been asked before but i cant find it.

Basically on my ie6 i'm a bit paranoid when i go to *tools, internet options, content, certificates, trusted root certification authorities* and i see a nice big list of companies/organisations that have trusted root . Hmm trusted by who exactly ?

I asked a mate at study camp about this and he said that he had deleted some of his but had to keep some, i'm just wondeing if this poses a threat to me ? as i dont know who they are, and i dont care for the idea and the options it says they have on advanced settings.
Ive checked a couple of them out just now but do i actually need these ?
I thought it best to ask in here.

Gives me the jitters....

It's for use with Secure Sockets Layer. It provides secure, encrypted connection on the web. So it's perfectly safe to trust. It has happend that these certificates have been authorized to bogus web sites, but I think that was only one time. And it was fixed very fast, if I remember correctly.

I trust SSL for all my banking needs, and also when I shop on the internet. Just be sure to check for a message like "you're now transfered to an unsecure connection". If that happens in the middle of a banking-session, someone is trying to steal the information you're posting. But that's never happend to me or anyone I know.

Trusted by who? There are certain third party organizations that issue these certificates to trusted web-sites. One the most well-known is called VeriSign. I guess they have procedures to check out the web-sites before they issue a certificate to them. They got to have, because if they issue certificates to crooks too many times nobody would trust them again. But as I said, they haven't made many mistakes up until now.