Online identity token for children
Online identity token for children VeriSign touts greater hurdles for imposters Updated: 7:18 p.m. ET Sept. 23, 2004 WASHINGTON - VeriSign Inc. and a children's safety group unveiled a new technology Thursday that they said would make it easier for children to avoid child predators online. The i-Stik token, inserted in a computer's USB port, provides verification of a child's age and gender. Chatroom lurkers who can't prove their age will stick out like sore thumbs as more kids adopt the tokens, backers said. "This doesn't guarantee everything, but at least it cuts the field down," said Montana Republican Sen. Conrad Burns at a Capitol Hill press conference that was attended by several other lawmakers. The token will be available free to students in a handful of schools this fall. School administrators will provide a list of students, with their ages and genders, and VeriSign will encode that information onto the tokens. The program will be expanded to thousands of schools across the country starting in the spring of 2005, said Teri Schroeder, president of the children's' online safety group i-Safe America. The token, made by VeriSign, is also used to verify the identity of people logging on to corporate networks. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6082984/