Fujitsu Laboratories announced on July 4 that they have developed a digital identity exchange technology which will make it possible for users and businesses to confirm the identity of all parties involved in an online transaction. This new exchange platform is powered by using blockchain technology.
With more transactions being processed online, there has been an exponential increase in the number of transactions that occur where face-to-face interaction is not possible. This has made it difficult for users and businesses to verify that the identity of the person is legitimate, jeopardizing the credibility of the transaction.
This has led to a rapid increase in fraud, as people have been falsifying personal credentials, not only in the financial world but in work-related endeavors in general. Fraudulent identities where people have falsified resumes, personal IDs, and professional qualifications are becoming a growing concern. This kind of fraud is growing rapidly and has created an urgent need for users and businesses to be able to authenticate the identity of all those involved in the transaction.
What Fujitsu has done is to create a digital identity exchange technology which enables people to be able to use online services more safely. This creates a user-friendly environment that will include such things as graphics so that relationships between users and those they are communicating with can be verified. This will help to create a “trust score” that helps all involved know if a party that is involved in the transaction can be trusted.
The new Decentralized Identification (DID) platform will use blockchain technology to analyze the trustworthiness of the personal credentials of each party. This is accomplished through the use of a mutual evaluation system.
While a revolutionary approach to ensuring the identity of a party in a transaction is great, this is not a new idea. In April, media giant Thomson Reuters announced that they had received a patent for a new blockchain based identity management system that is specifically geared toward ensuring that counterfeit identities cannot be created. This patent had been in the works since December 2015 but was finally approved in April.
What appears to separate Fujitsu from the Thomson Reuters platform or any others that are currently being developed is the “trust score.” This will enable users to build a reputation that can be trusted by others involved in a transaction. The longer that this system is in place, the greater the likelihood of larger numbers of businesses and individuals generating high trust scores that can make transactions of all kinds process quickly and more efficiently.
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