by Flemming Funch
Britt Blaser describes DIY Digital ID. Essentially he describes what we've already done a simple demo of. Despite that I'm the programmer on it I guess I'm still not certain it will be sufficiently useful. Maybe it will. The point is that it is a hard problem to solve to create centralized IDs for everybody, to make sure we know who we're dealing with when we're doing transactions with each other. Particularly financial transactions. There's an issue of who we would trust to issue such IDs, and whether they will really prove anything, and how we all can agree on how they are used. No common standard for such IDs has emerged. Britt's Do-it-Yourself idea is essentially that we reduce the problem to two people with websites going through certain simple steps to ensure they really are talking with each other. I express an interest in some service on your site, indicating an ID file on my site to explain who I am. Your software sends me back to my own site, asking me to demonstrate my control of the site that goes with the ID file by logging into the private area and finishing a log entry. Your entry then verifies that this log entry was made in the same location as my ID file, and that the time and IP numbers match what was observed. With this handshake being done we can then continue exploring the possibility of doing business. There'd be other factors involved, and other components needed, but that simple action could very well be a foundation for something useful. This kind of sequence of actions, your site to my site to your site, is fundamental to Xpertweb. Peer to peer. Standardized protocol for how we negotiate each step. Everything stored in simple XML files that are public and that can be discovered by any other party. And that allows me to research further who you are by spidering around and checking with other people who seem to know you, other people you've had business interactions with in the past. All without consulting any central authority.
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