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VeriSign's VIP
Verisign has announced a system for better authentication on the Internet that will be supported by eBay, Yahoo! and PayPal. The system uses a USB hardware token. I’m interested to see if people will use it. American Express had a card (I think it was called “blue”) a long time ago that included a smartcard and gafve away the readers. People didn’t go for it. Maybe if they can get someone to put them in this really cewl wristband, they will.
Posted by Phil Windley on February 15, 2006 10:05 AM
Comment from Frank Koehntopp at February 20, 2006 3:47 AM
Phil,
I don't think the adoption is about being kewl ;)
There's a good story about what went wrong with the Blue card here:
http://www.thisisbroken.com/b/2005/10/blue_card_chip_.html
Basically, I think this will not take of until there actually is any *benefit* for the user. No, 'security' isn't 'it'. Right now, the only ones to benefit from this are the companies asking for it. Same reason why smart cards have never taken off for banking or credit card payments yet - they completely transfer risk and accountability to the consumer, adding hassle, cost and time to the transaction. That's what you need to address when you want people to use something.