Identity is Crucial

“On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog”

Currently this is a mixed blessing. And it needs to be fixed in a way so that we can have both anonymity when we need it as well as identity. At the moment, the identity side of the equation is the one in most critical need of work.

There are many times when we want others to know it is really us and we want to know that others are really who they say they are -- like our friends, our family, and our bank.

We are facing an identity crisis. Most of us are drowning in user IDs and passwords -- hard to track, hard to remember, or often too easily exposed. A recent New York Times article trumpeted Information Cards as the solution and dissed OpenID. The article is worth reading and clearly illustrates the problems with user IDs and passwords but it missed some aspects of the final solution.

The guy who seems to have gotten it fully correct is Kim Cameron in his post at http://www.identityblog.com/?p=1003 Please read it.

I agree with him that OpenID (allowing multiple providers and relying parties to work together) along with Information Cards will provide a much better identity solution for all of us. I can’t wait.