New Online IDs To Cover Email to Fax
New Online IDs To Cover Email to Fax
June 21st, 2006: Global registry for new business and consumer digital addresses opens. 'I-Names' use OASIS XRI standards. Spam protection the big driver.
The i-names Global Registry Service (GRS) is open for business and seeks to provide organisations and individuals with digital addresses that are apparently 'unspammable'.
According to XDI.org, (previously XNS Public Trust Organization) the body that underpins i-names, "An i-name is simply "unspammable"-you can't send it email, call it, or send it a fax directly unless the owner has given you permission. If you don't have permission, you can use an i-name to make a contact request of the owner. These requests can be automatically filtered by your i-name service provider (i-broker) using a personal contact page to eliminate all but legitimate requests for contact.
Because an i-name is not tied to a specific physical or network address, it is also the first address that an individual can keep for life-across schools, jobs, homes, and travels. Furthermore, using the XDI trusted data interchange specifications under development at OASIS, individuals will be able to use their i-name to instantly share and link the precise set of personal data they want with other people, businesses, or organizations while always maintaining strong security and privacy protection."
The XRI standards use and interoperate with the SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language) standard, which is a key enabler to Liberty Alliance architecture.
There are two elements to i-names: "=name" and "@name." Individuals may use their =name as a privacy-protecting alternative to giving out email addresses or telephone numbers. For example, individuals may freely publish their =name as their public contact point on web-pages, blogs, or business cards as a way to be contacted by others who can also authenticate their digital identity, thus preventing spam. Businesses, organizations or other groups may use their @name to offer a variety of new digital identity and trusted data exchange services.
I-names, which are based on the XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) specifications from OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), may initially be registered in English/Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. Support for additional character sets is planned for the future.
Cordance, as the original developer of the OASIS XRI standards, has contracted with NeuStar to operate the i-names authoritative registry and resolution service for global XRIs in the same way that they currently do for the .biz and .us top level domains. Individuals and organizations may register i-names via accredited i-brokers and their authorized resellers. In alphabetical order, these initially include 1id.com, 2idi, Encirca, EZiBroker, INITECH, JanRain, and LinkSafe.
In addition to spam-safe contact service, i-brokers will be offering two other basic i-services: single sign-on service, which enables consumers to use their i-name and a single, strong, secure password to log in to websites or web-based applications; and forwarding service, which allows individuals or businesses to create their own simple, permanent digital addresses.
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