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By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as “work in progress.”
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on September 2, 2006.
Copyright © The Internet Society (2006).
This document describes the motivating use cases for DIX, the Digital Identity Exchange protocol.
1.
Requirements notation
2.
Introduction
3.
Goals
4.
Definitions
5.
Browser Based Use Cases
5.1.
B1
5.2.
B2
5.3.
B3
5.4.
B4
5.5.
B5
5.6.
B6
5.7.
B7
5.8.
B8
5.9.
B9
5.10.
B10
5.11.
B11
5.12.
B12
5.13.
B13
5.14.
B14
5.15.
B15
5.16.
B16
5.17.
B17
5.18.
B18
5.19.
B19
5.20.
B20
5.21.
B21
5.22.
B22
5.23.
B23
5.24.
B24
5.25.
B25
5.26.
B26
5.27.
B27
5.28.
B28
5.29.
B29
5.30.
B30
5.31.
B31
5.32.
B32
5.33.
B33
5.34.
B34
6.
Non Browser Based Use Cases
6.1.
NB1 - REST
6.2.
NB2
6.3.
NB3 - WebDAV
6.4.
NB4 - AtomPub
6.5.
NB5 - XCAP and SIMPLE
6.6.
NB6 - CalDAV
6.7.
NB7 - IMAP/POP3 and CalDAV
6.8.
NB8 - RSS, Web, and CalDAV
7.
Acknowledgements
8.
Security Considerations
9.
References
§
Author's Address
§
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements
| TOC |
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119] (Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” March 1997.).
| TOC |
The use cases below describe various scenarios for the Digital Identity Exchnage (DIX) protocol [dmd1] (Merrells, J., “draft-merrells-dix-01.txt,” March 2006.).
| TOC |
The goals of the protocol are:
- Identity Information Exchange:
The primary goal of any DIX protocol is to automate the exchange of Identity Information over the Internet.
- Ease of Adoption:
Any DIX protocol must provide the lowest possible barriers to adoption to ensure wide-spread usage of the protocol.
- Internet Scale:
Any DIX protocol must provide an Internet scale solution to identity information exchange.
- Privacy:
Any DIX protocol must ensure that all aspects of user privacy can be maintained.
| TOC |
The following terms and their definitions are drawn from the lexicon of 'The Identity gang', a community of thought leaders in the user-centric digital identity space. [identitygang] (The Identity Gang, “http://identitygang.org/Lexicon,” March 2006.).
- Digital Identity - The transmission of digital representation of a set of Claims made by one Party about itself or another Digital Subject, to one or more other Parties.
- Identity Agent - An agent acting on behalf of the user.
- Identifier - An identifying attribute for a set of attributes.
- Identity Data / Identity Information - A set of attributes.
- Claim - An assertion made by a Claimant of the value or values of one or more attributes of a Digital Subject, typically an assertion which is disputed or in doubt.
| TOC |
Some use cases are dependent upon others, so should be perused in order. Beth is our protagonist throughout; a typical Internet user, but she's a bit of a geek.
| TOC |
Beth receives an email from a friend introducing her to a new website, geeknews.com, a techie news site. She wishes to sign up so that she can read some articles. She sees an IN button, which she clicks. Her identity agent displays a screen informing her that geeknews.com is requesting some data, her first name. She enters 'Beth' at the prompt, provides consent and the data is sent to the site.
| TOC |
Beth browses to geekdate.com, she clicks an IN button. Her identity agent informs her that geekdate.com is requesting some data, her first name. Her agent already has this data. She provides consent and the data is sent to the site.
| TOC |
Beth decides to create a profile at geekdate.com. She sees an IN button, which she clicks. Her identity agent displays a screen informing her that geekdate.com is requesting some data, an identifier. She provides consent and the identifier and identifier verification data is sent to the site. Geekdate.com uses the verification data to verify that Beth owns the identifier her agent provided.
| TOC |
Beth decides to create a new profile at geekdate.com. She sees an IN button, which she clicks. Her identity agent displays a screen informing her that geekdate.com is requesting some data, an Identifier. She instructs her identity agent to create an identifier specific to her relationship with geekdate.com. She provides consent and the data is sent to the site.
| TOC |
Beth decides to flesh out her profile at geekdate.com. Geekdate.com displays a registration form. One field requests a URL of a photo of her. Beside it is a SAVE button. She enters the URL and clicks the button. Her identity agent displays a screen informing her that this data item can be stored. She decides that she wants to be able to provide that data to other sites. She provides consent and the data is stored by her agent.
| TOC |
Geeknews.com offers Beth the option to build up a readership preferences profile over time, the benefit being that the site will tailor its content to her interests. She decides to take up the offer, she sees an IN button, which she clicks. Her identity agent informs her that geeknews.com is requesting some data, an Identifier. She selects an existing identifier that represents a subset of her identity, which is used for a subset of the sites she has a relationship with. She provides consent and the data is sent to the site.
| TOC |
Beth wants to have multiple identifiers, for different aspects of herself, her personas. She wants to have a 'home' persona for identity data that she releases to her personal sites, such as geeknews.com. She wants to have a separate 'work' persona for identity data that she releases to work-related sites, such as helpdesk.com. She wants some of her identity data to be the same for her different personas, and other data to be different.
| TOC |
[Assumptions: Beth has visited geeknews and geekdate before and has informed her identity agent that she consents to a relationship with them.] Beth starts her day with a strong coffee and a perusal of geeknews.com. She starts her computer and authenticates herself to the operating system. By that authentication mechanism she has also authenticated herself to her identity agent, as her vendor of that system has hooked it into the operating system's authentication system. She browses to geeknews.com and clicks the IN button and is directly shown the content, no further clicks. She then browses to geekdate.com, she clicks the IN button and is directly presented with her profile no further clicks.
| TOC |
Beth's identity agent prompts her to provide a 'spoken name'. Using the multimedia capabilities of her computer she records her spoken name; an mp3 of her saying 'Beth'. She later browses to voicebox.com, which runs a voicemail service, she opts to create an account and the site requests some properties, amongst which is a request for her spoken name. She provides consent and the data is sent to the site.
| TOC |
Beth purchases a book from an online store, as she's checking out the store makes her an offer: 10% off for completion of a demographic survey. She's tempted, but how many data fields are there? One hundred! Too many to be worth the effort. But it happens to be commonly requested data, which she has already entered during previous exchanges with other sites. So, she completes the remaining fields, saving them to her identity agent for future reuse. She provides consent and the data is sent to the site.
| TOC |
Beth has invested significant effort in building up a persona and reputation around a specific identifier, her 'home' identifier. But, she has become dissatisfied with her identity agent and so decides to switch vendors. She establishes a new agent and migrates her identity data from the old one to the new one. She then delegates authority for her identifier to her new identity agent for authentication and provision of identity data.
| TOC |
Whilst in town Beth stops off at an Internet Cafe to check her email. She goes to her webmail account, which requires that she identity herself. Her Identity Agent prompts her for consent and provides her identifier so that she can gain access to her email.
| TOC |
Beth visits a website to purchase some books. The site requests some identity information, her shipping address. Her Identity Agent warns her that satisfying the request would contravene her established privacy policy. The website wishes to pass her address to affiliated companies so that they may send her valuable promotional offers, but Beth has a privacy policy that not allow unsolicited mail to be sent to her shipping address.
| TOC |
Beth moves house, so she changes the home address information stored by her Identity Agent. Her Identity Agent offers to notify all relying parties to whom she has previously provided her home address.
| TOC |
Beth is a frequent traveler on Galactic Air, whose site offers a claim of membership for use at affiliate sites. She acquires a membership claim, which her Identity Agent stores for her.
| TOC |
Beth visits a Galactic Air affiliate site that provides discounted travel insurance for frequent travelers. She presents her Galactic Air membership claim from her Identity Agent and receives a discount.
| TOC |
Beth visits a rental cars site. She opts out of the offered drivers insurance as she is covered by her travel insurance. To complete the booking the site requests a claim that she has valid insurance. Her identity agent is unable to satisfy the request so provides a list of suggested sources. Beth picks her insurance provider and her identity agent acquires the required claim and presents it to the rental car site.
| TOC |
A couple of months later Beth books another trip. The travel site requests her claim of Galactic Air membership. Her identity agent finds that the claim has expired, so refreshes it by requesting an updated claim from galacticair.com.
| TOC |
Beth leaves work and goes to the bus stop. Whilst waiting for the next bus home she uses her smart phone to browse geeknews.com. Her Identity Agent provides her with the same ease of browsing that she experiences on her work and home computers.
| TOC |
Beth is ending her day at work. She leaves work and waits for the next bus home. Her friend calls and invites her to the movies. She uses her phone to browse to the movies.com to find out what's playing. The site requests her current location, which she consents to release via her Identity Agent.
| TOC |
Beth signs up with a financial services site, BigPicture.com, which provides an aggregate view of her finances. To provide its service BigPicture.com requires access to her existing bank accounts. Beth wishes to securely provide agency rights to BigPicture.com, so she acquires the appropriate access tokens from her existing bank account providers and stores them with her Identity Agent. She then presents the access tokens to BigPicture.com so that it can access her account data.
| TOC |
Beth goes to an auction side, ibay.com. Her Identity Agent shows a signed graphic of ibay.com for releasing data. Beth knows that she's dealing with ibay.com, and not an impostor.
| TOC |
Beth visits her online bank, which requires the use of a strong authentication mechanism. She authenticates to her Identity Agent using a two-factor device indicated by the bank to be an acceptable mechanism.
| TOC |
Adam uses a service to acquire a verified email claim. With it he can prove that he owns his email address, Adam at example.com, without having to go through a verification process.
| TOC |
Beth gives her friend, Adam at example.com, access to her photos. Adam receives an email from Beth inviting him to view her photos. He goes to the site, which requests a verified email claim. He presents his claim and gains access to the photos Beth has published for him.
| TOC |
Adam decides to create a profile at geekdate.com. geekdate.com requests an Identifier. He instructs his identity agent to create an identifier specific to his relationship with geekdate.com.
| TOC |
Adam visits a site that requires that he prove he is over 21. He provides the site with a claim that he is over 21, issues by the government of his country of residence, gov.ca. The claim contains no other information about Adam and the site is unable to use the claim to discover more information about Adam.
| TOC |
Adam returns to the same site. He must again prove that he is over 21. He provides a claim, but the site cannot tell that it is Adam that has returned again to the site.
| TOC |
Adam heavily frequents two gambling sites, goldenslots.com and luckydice.com. He uses the same identifier across both sites as he wants them to know he is the same person.
| TOC |
Beth provides a claim from galacticair.com to many different websites. She wants all of the sites to know that she is the same person providing the claim, so she can receive a free flight at the end of the year.
| TOC |
Beth's employer has partnered with a local university to provide it's staff with access to online courses. She signs up for some modules at the university admissions website acquiring an enrollment claim. She then browses to the computer science school website to sign up for an advanced programming course. The site requests claims that she is an employee, that she has previously completed some basic introductory modules, and that she has been enrolled.
| TOC |
Beth is shopping online for a new laptop computer. She visits an online site that caters to recently graduated professionals. She selects a machine and investigates the lease options available. To work out the monthly payment the site requests some claims: A claim that she's an alumni of a university, so that the site can include an appropriately branded tote bag. A claim that she's a member of Galactic Air, so that she can be credited with airmiles for her purchase. And, a claim from a credit scoring agency that she has a 'good' credit rating.
| TOC |
Beth is at home checking her work email, she has an email from a colleague assigning a customer support issue to her. The company help desk system is provided by helpdesk.com, an on-demand application provider. She clicks through a link in the email to the page that describes the issue. Helpdesk.com requests a claim that Beth is an employee of 'Nano Software Inc', which she provides from her Identity Agent, and she gains access to the page.
| TOC |
Beth has many computing devices in her life, running different operating systems and different application software. She makes her own choices about her own computing environment, but she has little choice when the software is bundled by the device manufacturer or at work where she is subject to her employer's policies. A consequence is that she has multiple Identity Agents, which she uses for managing different personas.
| TOC |
| TOC |
Beth wants to use QOPO.com for printing her pictures that are stored in flackr. She visits QOPO.com and her identity agent is instructed to acquire a token from flackr. Her Identity Agent retrieves the token from flackr and presents it to QOPO.com. QOPO.com passes the token over the REST based web service that flackr provides to retrieve her photos for printing.
| TOC |
Beth is a big fan of Rocky Gervas and listens to his podcast fanatically. The Rocky Gervas show recently started charging a small fee for the podcast. Her media player polls the podcast periodically. When polled the site requests a claim from Beth's Identity Agent asserting that Beth has paid for the podcast. Beth's Identity Agent retrieves the claim presents it to the site and the latest episode of The Rocky Gervas show is downloaded.
| TOC |
At work Beth uses her website editing software (a WebDAV client) to publish some company confidential content to their extranet. Beth is collaborating with Charles at another company, who requires access to the content. Beth configures the extranet to allow Charles access. Charles uses his website editing software (also a WebDAV client) to fetch the content. The extranet site requests identity information, which his client presents from his Identity agent, and he is able to edit the content.
| TOC |
Beth uses a blogging client (AtomPub) to both post content to her blog and to add comments on other people's blog postings. Her client uses her identity agent to associate identifying information (her blog url and favicon) with her comments.
| TOC |
Beth uses her instant messaging client (a SIMPLE client) to communicate with her friends. She uses her client to update her profile information (via XCAP), adding a new friend. Her client didn't need to authenticate to her XCAP server, as she had already authenticated herself to her identity agent.
| TOC |
Beth needs to arrange a conference call with Charles. She uses her calendaring software (a CalDAV client) to publish her free-busy time to Charles. Charles uses his calendaring software (also a CalDAV client) to fetch Beth's free-busy time. Beth's calendar publisher requests some identity information of Charle's client. It's provided from his identity agent and he is able to book a time for the call.
| TOC |
At work Beth uses both calendaring (CalDAV) and email (IMAP,POP3,SMTP) clients to manage her time and messages. Her identity agent authenticates her as owning the identifier that both clients use to identify her. In this way she need only authenticate once to her identity agent instead of twice, once to each client.
| TOC |
Beth works in a distributed workgroup collaborating with colleagues, individual contractors, and employees of partner companies. The calendaring information she has access to is available via CalDAV, RSS, and HTTP/HTML. Each of her software clients uses her identity agent to ensure she need only authenticate once, instead of once per client.
| TOC |
The editor acknowledges the use case contributions made by Dick Hardt, Robert Yates, Lisa Dusseault and Laurie Rae.
| TOC |
None.
| TOC |
| [RFC2119] | Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 (TXT, HTML, XML). |
| [dmd1] | Merrells, J., “draft-merrells-dix-01.txt,” March 2006. |
| [identitygang] | The Identity Gang, “http://identitygang.org/Lexicon,” March 2006. |
| TOC |
| John Merrells | |
| Sxip Identity | |
| 798 Beatty Street | |
| Vancouver, BC V6B 2M1 | |
| Canada | |
| Email: | merrells at sxip.com |
| URI: | http://sxip.com/ |
| TOC |
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr at ietf.org.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an “AS IS” basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Copyright © The Internet Society (2006). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society.
Network Working Group J. Merrells
Internet-Draft Sxip Identity
Expires: September 2, 2006 March 2006
Digital Identity Exchange - Use Cases
draft-merrells-use-cases-02.txt
Status of this Memo
By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on September 2, 2006.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract
This document describes the motivating use cases for DIX, the Digital
Identity Exchange protocol.
Merrells Expires September 2, 2006 [Page 1]
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Table of Contents
1. Requirements notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Browser Based Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.1. B1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.2. B2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.3. B3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.4. B4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.5. B5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.6. B6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.7. B7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.8. B8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.9. B9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.10. B10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.11. B11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.12. B12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.13. B13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.14. B14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.15. B15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.16. B16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.17. B17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.18. B18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.19. B19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.20. B20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.21. B21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.22. B22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.23. B23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.24. B24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.25. B25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.26. B26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.27. B27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.28. B28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.29. B29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.30. B30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.31. B31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.32. B32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.33. B33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.34. B34 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Non Browser Based Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.1. NB1 - REST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.2. NB2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.3. NB3 - WebDAV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.4. NB4 - AtomPub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.5. NB5 - XCAP and SIMPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.6. NB6 - CalDAV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
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6.7. NB7 - IMAP/POP3 and CalDAV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.8. NB8 - RSS, Web, and CalDAV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 20
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1. Requirements notation
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
Merrells Expires September 2, 2006 [Page 4]
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2. Introduction
The use cases below describe various scenarios for the Digital
Identity Exchnage (DIX) protocol [dmd1].
Merrells Expires September 2, 2006 [Page 5]
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3. Goals
The goals of the protocol are:
Identity Information Exchange:
The primary goal of any DIX protocol is to automate the exchange
of Identity Information over the Internet.
Ease of Adoption:
Any DIX protocol must provide the lowest possible barriers to
adoption to ensure wide-spread usage of the protocol.
Internet Scale:
Any DIX protocol must provide an Internet scale solution to
identity information exchange.
Privacy:
Any DIX protocol must ensure that all aspects of user privacy can
be maintained.
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4. Definitions
The following terms and their definitions are drawn from the lexicon
of 'The Identity gang', a community of thought leaders in the user-
centric digital identity space. [identitygang].
Digital Identity - The transmission of digital representation of a
set of Claims made by one Party about itself or another Digital
Subject, to one or more other Parties.
Identity Agent - An agent acting on behalf of the user.
Identifier - An identifying attribute for a set of attributes.
Identity Data / Identity Information - A set of attributes.
Claim - An assertion made by a Claimant of the value or values of
one or more attributes of a Digital Subject, typically an
assertion which is disputed or in doubt.
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5. Browser Based Use Cases
Some use cases are dependent upon others, so should be perused in
order. Beth is our protagonist throughout; a typical Internet user,
but she's a bit of a geek.
5.1. B1
Beth receives an email from a friend introducing her to a new
website, geeknews.com, a techie news site. She wishes to sign up so
that she can read some articles. She sees an IN button, which she
clicks. Her identity agent displays a screen informing her that
geeknews.com is requesting some data, her first name. She enters
'Beth' at the prompt, provides consent and the data is sent to the
site.
5.2. B2
Beth browses to geekdate.com, she clicks an IN button. Her identity
agent informs her that geekdate.com is requesting some data, her
first name. Her agent already has this data. She provides consent
and the data is sent to the site.
5.3. B3
Beth decides to create a profile at geekdate.com. She sees an IN
button, which she clicks. Her identity agent displays a screen
informing her that geekdate.com is requesting some data, an
identifier. She provides consent and the identifier and identifier
verification data is sent to the site. Geekdate.com uses the
verification data to verify that Beth owns the identifier her agent
provided.
5.4. B4
Beth decides to create a new profile at geekdate.com. She sees an IN
button, which she clicks. Her identity agent displays a screen
informing her that geekdate.com is requesting some data, an
Identifier. She instructs her identity agent to create an identifier
specific to her relationship with geekdate.com. She provides consent
and the data is sent to the site.
5.5. B5
Beth decides to flesh out her profile at geekdate.com. Geekdate.com
displays a registration form. One field requests a URL of a photo of
her. Beside it is a SAVE button. She enters the URL and clicks the
button. Her identity agent displays a screen informing her that this
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data item can be stored. She decides that she wants to be able to
provide that data to other sites. She provides consent and the data
is stored by her agent.
5.6. B6
Geeknews.com offers Beth the option to build up a readership
preferences profile over time, the benefit being that the site will
tailor its content to her interests. She decides to take up the
offer, she sees an IN button, which she clicks. Her identity agent
informs her that geeknews.com is requesting some data, an Identifier.
She selects an existing identifier that represents a subset of her
identity, which is used for a subset of the sites she has a
relationship with. She provides consent and the data is sent to the
site.
5.7. B7
Beth wants to have multiple identifiers, for different aspects of
herself, her personas. She wants to have a 'home' persona for
identity data that she releases to her personal sites, such as
geeknews.com. She wants to have a separate 'work' persona for
identity data that she releases to work-related sites, such as
helpdesk.com. She wants some of her identity data to be the same for
her different personas, and other data to be different.
5.8. B8
[Assumptions: Beth has visited geeknews and geekdate before and has
informed her identity agent that she consents to a relationship with
them.] Beth starts her day with a strong coffee and a perusal of
geeknews.com. She starts her computer and authenticates herself to
the operating system. By that authentication mechanism she has also
authenticated herself to her identity agent, as her vendor of that
system has hooked it into the operating system's authentication
system. She browses to geeknews.com and clicks the IN button and is
directly shown the content, no further clicks. She then browses to
geekdate.com, she clicks the IN button and is directly presented with
her profile no further clicks.
5.9. B9
Beth's identity agent prompts her to provide a 'spoken name'. Using
the multimedia capabilities of her computer she records her spoken
name; an mp3 of her saying 'Beth'. She later browses to
voicebox.com, which runs a voicemail service, she opts to create an
account and the site requests some properties, amongst which is a
request for her spoken name. She provides consent and the data is
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sent to the site.
5.10. B10
Beth purchases a book from an online store, as she's checking out the
store makes her an offer: 10% off for completion of a demographic
survey. She's tempted, but how many data fields are there? One
hundred! Too many to be worth the effort. But it happens to be
commonly requested data, which she has already entered during
previous exchanges with other sites. So, she completes the remaining
fields, saving them to her identity agent for future reuse. She
provides consent and the data is sent to the site.
5.11. B11
Beth has invested significant effort in building up a persona and
reputation around a specific identifier, her 'home' identifier. But,
she has become dissatisfied with her identity agent and so decides to
switch vendors. She establishes a new agent and migrates her
identity data from the old one to the new one. She then delegates
authority for her identifier to her new identity agent for
authentication and provision of identity data.
5.12. B12
Whilst in town Beth stops off at an Internet Cafe to check her email.
She goes to her webmail account, which requires that she identity
herself. Her Identity Agent prompts her for consent and provides her
identifier so that she can gain access to her email.
5.13. B13
Beth visits a website to purchase some books. The site requests some
identity information, her shipping address. Her Identity Agent warns
her that satisfying the request would contravene her established
privacy policy. The website wishes to pass her address to affiliated
companies so that they may send her valuable promotional offers, but
Beth has a privacy policy that not allow unsolicited mail to be sent
to her shipping address.
5.14. B14
Beth moves house, so she changes the home address information stored
by her Identity Agent. Her Identity Agent offers to notify all
relying parties to whom she has previously provided her home address.
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5.15. B15
Beth is a frequent traveler on Galactic Air, whose site offers a
claim of membership for use at affiliate sites. She acquires a
membership claim, which her Identity Agent stores for her.
5.16. B16
Beth visits a Galactic Air affiliate site that provides discounted
travel insurance for frequent travelers. She presents her Galactic
Air membership claim from her Identity Agent and receives a discount.
5.17. B17
Beth visits a rental cars site. She opts out of the offered drivers
insurance as she is covered by her travel insurance. To complete the
booking the site requests a claim that she has valid insurance. Her
identity agent is unable to satisfy the request so provides a list of
suggested sources. Beth picks her insurance provider and her
identity agent acquires the required claim and presents it to the
rental car site.
5.18. B18
A couple of months later Beth books another trip. The travel site
requests her claim of Galactic Air membership. Her identity agent
finds that the claim has expired, so refreshes it by requesting an
updated claim from galacticair.com.
5.19. B19
Beth leaves work and goes to the bus stop. Whilst waiting for the
next bus home she uses her smart phone to browse geeknews.com. Her
Identity Agent provides her with the same ease of browsing that she
experiences on her work and home computers.
5.20. B20
Beth is ending her day at work. She leaves work and waits for the
next bus home. Her friend calls and invites her to the movies. She
uses her phone to browse to the movies.com to find out what's
playing. The site requests her current location, which she consents
to release via her Identity Agent.
5.21. B21
Beth signs up with a financial services site, BigPicture.com, which
provides an aggregate view of her finances. To provide its service
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BigPicture.com requires access to her existing bank accounts. Beth
wishes to securely provide agency rights to BigPicture.com, so she
acquires the appropriate access tokens from her existing bank account
providers and stores them with her Identity Agent. She then presents
the access tokens to BigPicture.com so that it can access her account
data.
5.22. B22
Beth goes to an auction side, ibay.com. Her Identity Agent shows a
signed graphic of ibay.com for releasing data. Beth knows that she's
dealing with ibay.com, and not an impostor.
5.23. B23
Beth visits her online bank, which requires the use of a strong
authentication mechanism. She authenticates to her Identity Agent
using a two-factor device indicated by the bank to be an acceptable
mechanism.
5.24. B24
Adam uses a service to acquire a verified email claim. With it he
can prove that he owns his email address, Adam at example.com, without
having to go through a verification process.
5.25. B25
Beth gives her friend, Adam at example.com, access to her photos. Adam
receives an email from Beth inviting him to view her photos. He goes
to the site, which requests a verified email claim. He presents his
claim and gains access to the photos Beth has published for him.
5.26. B26
Adam decides to create a profile at geekdate.com. geekdate.com
requests an Identifier. He instructs his identity agent to create an
identifier specific to his relationship with geekdate.com.
5.27. B27
Adam visits a site that requires that he prove he is over 21. He
provides the site with a claim that he is over 21, issues by the
government of his country of residence, gov.ca. The claim contains
no other information about Adam and the site is unable to use the
claim to discover more information about Adam.
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5.28. B28
Adam returns to the same site. He must again prove that he is over
21. He provides a claim, but the site cannot tell that it is Adam
that has returned again to the site.
5.29. B29
Adam heavily frequents two gambling sites, goldenslots.com and
luckydice.com. He uses the same identifier across both sites as he
wants them to know he is the same person.
5.30. B30
Beth provides a claim from galacticair.com to many different
websites. She wants all of the sites to know that she is the same
person providing the claim, so she can receive a free flight at the
end of the year.
5.31. B31
Beth's employer has partnered with a local university to provide it's
staff with access to online courses. She signs up for some modules
at the university admissions website acquiring an enrollment claim.
She then browses to the computer science school website to sign up
for an advanced programming course. The site requests claims that
she is an employee, that she has previously completed some basic
introductory modules, and that she has been enrolled.
5.32. B32
Beth is shopping online for a new laptop computer. She visits an
online site that caters to recently graduated professionals. She
selects a machine and investigates the lease options available. To
work out the monthly payment the site requests some claims: A claim
that she's an alumni of a university, so that the site can include an
appropriately branded tote bag. A claim that she's a member of
Galactic Air, so that she can be credited with airmiles for her
purchase. And, a claim from a credit scoring agency that she has a
'good' credit rating.
5.33. B33
Beth is at home checking her work email, she has an email from a
colleague assigning a customer support issue to her. The company
help desk system is provided by helpdesk.com, an on-demand
application provider. She clicks through a link in the email to the
page that describes the issue. Helpdesk.com requests a claim that
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Beth is an employee of 'Nano Software Inc', which she provides from
her Identity Agent, and she gains access to the page.
5.34. B34
Beth has many computing devices in her life, running different
operating systems and different application software. She makes her
own choices about her own computing environment, but she has little
choice when the software is bundled by the device manufacturer or at
work where she is subject to her employer's policies. A consequence
is that she has multiple Identity Agents, which she uses for managing
different personas.
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6. Non Browser Based Use Cases
6.1. NB1 - REST
Beth wants to use QOPO.com for printing her pictures that are stored
in flackr. She visits QOPO.com and her identity agent is instructed
to acquire a token from flackr. Her Identity Agent retrieves the
token from flackr and presents it to QOPO.com. QOPO.com passes the
token over the REST based web service that flackr provides to
retrieve her photos for printing.
6.2. NB2
Beth is a big fan of Rocky Gervas and listens to his podcast
fanatically. The Rocky Gervas show recently started charging a small
fee for the podcast. Her media player polls the podcast
periodically. When polled the site requests a claim from Beth's
Identity Agent asserting that Beth has paid for the podcast. Beth's
Identity Agent retrieves the claim presents it to the site and the
latest episode of The Rocky Gervas show is downloaded.
6.3. NB3 - WebDAV
At work Beth uses her website editing software (a WebDAV client) to
publish some company confidential content to their extranet. Beth is
collaborating with Charles at another company, who requires access to
the content. Beth configures the extranet to allow Charles access.
Charles uses his website editing software (also a WebDAV client) to
fetch the content. The extranet site requests identity information,
which his client presents from his Identity agent, and he is able to
edit the content.
6.4. NB4 - AtomPub
Beth uses a blogging client (AtomPub) to both post content to her
blog and to add comments on other people's blog postings. Her client
uses her identity agent to associate identifying information (her
blog url and favicon) with her comments.
6.5. NB5 - XCAP and SIMPLE
Beth uses her instant messaging client (a SIMPLE client) to
communicate with her friends. She uses her client to update her
profile information (via XCAP), adding a new friend. Her client
didn't need to authenticate to her XCAP server, as she had already
authenticated herself to her identity agent.
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6.6. NB6 - CalDAV
Beth needs to arrange a conference call with Charles. She uses her
calendaring software (a CalDAV client) to publish her free-busy time
to Charles. Charles uses his calendaring software (also a CalDAV
client) to fetch Beth's free-busy time. Beth's calendar publisher
requests some identity information of Charle's client. It's provided
from his identity agent and he is able to book a time for the call.
6.7. NB7 - IMAP/POP3 and CalDAV
At work Beth uses both calendaring (CalDAV) and email
(IMAP,POP3,SMTP) clients to manage her time and messages. Her
identity agent authenticates her as owning the identifier that both
clients use to identify her. In this way she need only authenticate
once to her identity agent instead of twice, once to each client.
6.8. NB8 - RSS, Web, and CalDAV
Beth works in a distributed workgroup collaborating with colleagues,
individual contractors, and employees of partner companies. The
calendaring information she has access to is available via CalDAV,
RSS, and HTTP/HTML. Each of her software clients uses her identity
agent to ensure she need only authenticate once, instead of once per
client.
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7. Acknowledgements
The editor acknowledges the use case contributions made by Dick
Hardt, Robert Yates, Lisa Dusseault and Laurie Rae.
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8. Security Considerations
None.
9. References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[dmd1] Merrells, J., "draft-merrells-dix-01.txt", March 2006.
[identitygang]
The Identity Gang, "http://identitygang.org/Lexicon";,
March 2006.
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Author's Address
John Merrells
Sxip Identity
798 Beatty Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 2M1
Canada
Email: merrells at sxip.com
URI: http://sxip.com/
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