Microsoft to name CardSpace partners

A major online retailer and a credit card giant are set to back Microsoft's digital identity scheme

Microsoft will have another go at helping to solve online fraud when it announces the names of a major card issuer and an online retail giant that will support its CardSpace identity-management technology at the consumer release of Windows Vista next month.

Formerly known as InfoCard, CardSpace lets users provide personal information to sellers, government agencies or other organisations via an encrypted transmission. Users can set up multiple profiles so that more trusted contacts have access to extra information.

Microsoft hopes that CardSpace will have more success than Passport, its much derided system for sharing logon credentials across sites.

Jerry Fishenden, Microsoft UK national technology officer, said, “This is the fruition of five years’ work and what we have distilled from the best ideas and worst ideas about identity. It’s also a bit of a mea culpa by Microsoft that says, ‘Passport: Bad idea.’ A lot of people asked what on earth Microsoft was doing in the middle of an interaction between you [the consumer] and eBay or Amazon.”

Steve Plank, Microsoft identity management evangelist, said, “This could do for online fraud what chip-and-PIN did for credit-card fraud.”