Need for a simple form of network personal identity (NPI)

Just the other day somebody (who I don't personally know) wanted to post a comment on one of my blogs.  All of my blogs are hosted on Blogger and require merely that you have a Blogger id, but there are people who don't have Blogger ids and may not really want yet another id to keep track of.  In this case, the person did have one but had forgotten the password since he doesn't use Blogger very often.  I personally also have a TypeKey id so I can comment on TypePad blogs.  Yes, it's necessary to have some sort of identity authentication to verify that the commenter is a real person (sort of), but the fragmentation of the identity mechanisms is rather disappointing.  It would be much better to have a "federation" of identity mechanisms that can exchange identity authentication.

 

My real point is that if we're having so much trouble even with simple blog comment identity mechanisms, how are we ever going to succeed with more complex issues such as email, ecommerce, privacy, law enforcement, national security, and other complex issues?

 

We have a very long way to go on the Network Personal Identity (NPI) path.

 

-- Jack Krupansky