Comments on: Free digital identities from Verisign http://www.tomrafteryit.net/free-digital-identities-from-verisign/ Tom Raftery, social media consultant, speaker, blogger and podcaster Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:47:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: adam http://www.tomrafteryit.net/free-digital-identities-from-verisign/#comment-10234 adam Fri, 19 May 2006 15:12:04 +0000 http://www.tomrafteryit.net/free-digital-identities-from-verisign/#comment-10234 This isn't new. Microsoft did it (in a different way, but not that different) with Passport, Sun tried it with Liberty Alliance, and when was the last time you saw them used outside their own networks (or at all, in Sun's case)? Centralised signups for stuff like this simply don't work, because of trust (or lack of it), privacy, and security issues. Typekey is about as far as anyone will ever get with something like this. On a related note, Verisign just bought GeoTrust, bringing the Certificate Authority business one step closer to a monopoly (they bought Thawte from "space tourist number two" and Ubuntu god Mark Shuttleworth a few years ago). They also own Network Solutions, one of the worst companies in the world, and they "negotiated" (i.e. bought) a perpetual licence to run .com from ICANN. This isn't a company I like or trust. This isn’t new. Microsoft did it (in a different way, but not that different) with Passport, Sun tried it with Liberty Alliance, and when was the last time you saw them used outside their own networks (or at all, in Sun’s case)? Centralised signups for stuff like this simply don’t work, because of trust (or lack of it), privacy, and security issues. Typekey is about as far as anyone will ever get with something like this.

On a related note, Verisign just bought GeoTrust, bringing the Certificate Authority business one step closer to a monopoly (they bought Thawte from “space tourist number two” and Ubuntu god Mark Shuttleworth a few years ago). They also own Network Solutions, one of the worst companies in the world, and they “negotiated” (i.e. bought) a perpetual licence to run .com from ICANN. This isn’t a company I like or trust.

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