Facilitating online integrity using OpenID

Abstract

"Integrity is the essence of everything successful" (Richard Buckminster Fuller)

How can individuals behave in an online environment that enables them to keep and enhance their integrity and reputation, fills colleagues with confidence, allows for free exchange of information and yet still manage to keep private those things that they wish to keep private? The Internet is a largely anonymous world, with flame-wars, spamming, phishing and distrust being the order of the day, but I will argue that by allowing some carefully controlled non-anonymity to 'leak out', mutual trust can be built up. I will outline some existing authentication and authorisation systems, and will touch upon identity management issues in general. I will discuss some initiatives such as Shibboleth, OpenID in general and discuss in particular how OpenID might be used in practice to allow individuals to have a greater say in what information is held about them, and how this information is used by third parties.