Fun Communications logoJohannes Feulner of Fun Communications recently showed me three different identity sites they’ve created, each fun and valuable in its own way. The first, www.webcard-loyalty.com, lets companies create online loyalty cards for their customers. These loyalty Information Cards enable merchants to offer bonuses and discounts when the cards are used, similarly to how physical loyalty cards such as frequent flyer cards and frequent shopper cards are used to provide these benefits in the offline world. You can read more about “virtual loyalty cards” and about the innovation prize they won.

The second, openidbycard.com, dynamically creates a site-specific OpenID to use at an OpenID relying party from any Information Card offering the privatepersonalidentifier (PPID) claim. Type “openidbycard.com” as your OpenID identifier into any OpenID login form and an OpenID will be created for the site based on the site identity and the PPID returned by the card. While I understand value of using public identifiers (such as self-issued.info) in some contexts, it’s great to also have the choice of using unidirectional identifiers at OpenID sites.

Finally, idtheft.fun.de demonstrates the ability of attackers to mount man-in-the-middle attacks against OpenID sites (and lets you try it yourself!). The site phishes OpenID passwords and other information sent through the browser, all via web pages that look authentic, but that are actually under control of the attacker. This will be the subject of my next post.