Commercial activities

[Dave Birch] Identity management technologies have to get into the consumer space and go with the grain of what companies and their customers want to do. Clearly we can’t just start from scratch and redesign all commercial interactions on top of a (currently non-existent) identity infrastructure. Yet the technology that we need to improve the customer-business interaction is coming together, so it would be a good idea to try and figure how it can be made useful or attractive.

The good news is that these problems are already being addressed. Technology now makes possible an identity infrastructure that simultaneously addresses the security and public service needs of government as well as those of private sector organisations and the privacy needs of individuals. Privacy-enhancing security technologies now exist that enable the secure sharing of identity-related information in a way that ensures privacy for all parties involved in the data flow.

[From IdentityBlog – Digital Identity, Privacy, and the Internet’s Missing Identity Layer]

The (albeit limited) marketplace concept of identity management as a way making logging in to web sites and filling out online forms less painful is there, so it would be a good place to start.

I suppose the kind of thing that I should be excited about is the launch of any commercial or near-commercial service that is founded on Information Cards, OpenID or any other “modern” identity management technology. As it happens, such a service launched a couple of weeks ago.

The Equifax online identity card or I-Card is designed to make to make online transactions easier and more secure. Users of the i-card will be able to log into sites that support the technology without filling in forms or keeping tabs on multiple passwords.

[From Online identity card scheme aims to remove password headaches • The Register]

I thought I’d give it a try so I registered (I have a valid social security number because I used to work in the USA) but it wouldn’t give me a card, presumably because I’m not listed at my old address any more. When they extend the scheme to the UK, I’ll let you know how it works out.

In addition to Parity’s new product, Azigo, which works on both Macs and PCs,

[From I-Card Movement Gets Boost From Equifax | Epicenter from Wired.com]

It didn’t. I went to give it a try, just to see what the software was like and how easy it might be to install, and it said that Mac support was coming “soon”, so in the end my latest foray into i-Cards went absolutely nowhere. I’d hate to generalise from personal, anecdotal, experience but I do want to remind people like Azigo that Macs may be in the minority in the market, but plenty of journalist, bloggers, consultants and influencer have them. So there.

These opinions are my own (I think) and are presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]