Consumers enjoy the comfort and convenience of being able to go online and shop.  With the thought of identity theft always looming over our heads more so today than yesterday customers are becoming a little more cautious about shopping online.  The sites most of us choose to shop from are well known, and have that little icon stating that it is a safe shopping space but is it really safe?  Many of the identity thieves that work the internet looking for personal information to steal are also hackers.  Hackers do just what it sounds like they do.  They hack into our computer using various means, but the end result is always the same.  Our personal information is stolen.

To help alleviate the fear of ordering online and the fear of identity theft, some companies are trying to offer solutions to the customers.  One of these solutions is the Infocard.  In addition, to hopefully reduce the risk the identity theft, it would eliminate the need for customers to create separate user names and passwords for every online store they use now and in the future.  The Infocard would also make shopping online more convenient.

At this present time, Microsoft has created a system called Cardspace which uses Infocards.  They allow online merchants to confirm a consumer’s identity but the merchants do not have access to the customer’s financial information.  All your financial information would be with the intermediary, which would be your bank.  Once this Infocard is scanned and approved or denied, the retailers would receive confirmation of the decision.  All the online store would ever receive is the decision, no any personal or financial information.

Yes, this is a great starting point for credit protection but many consumers and developers feel the system is taking to long to develop and implement.  There are a lot of details that would need to be addressed before such a system could be successful.  Another separate matter would be how to get online merchants to participate in such a program.

Although there may be a few stumbling blocks along the way, the future looks very optimistic for such a system.  The reason for this is that many customers love to shop online for the convenience; maybe they are disabled and cannot get out that easily, they find better selections online, and others.  Seeing that shopping online is going to be a thing of the future, technology needs to keep up with the demand for better identity theft protection when you shop online.

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